CTHULHU RESURGENT

The Collected Harrison Peel Stories

Volume 2

David Conyers

“Conyers is like some impossibly perfect distillation of Lovecraft, Fleming, Barker and Ludlum. There’s an awful logic to his terror and action.” — PETER CLINES

“David Conyers, I have to say, is my favorite mythos author. He does what would have made Lovecraft weep with joy.” — CJ HENDERSON

“Every bit as disquieting as anything found in the oeuvre of Lovecraft.” — BLACK STATIC

“I started reading a few pages… and it grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. A fast-paced read with a great plot and some DAMN scary Shoggoths!” — LOVECRAFT EZINE

“When it comes to eldritch espionage action, nobody does it better.” — CODY GOODFELLOW

“The versatile David Conyers greatly impresses. He is gifted with much imagination, the knack for intriguing plot, suspenseful pacing, and compelling characters. I suspect the man can do it all, and will.” — JEFFREY THOMAS

“David Conyers is like the physicist who is all too happy to remind us that the solid world is only an illusion. Time and again, Conyers rips open the universe for us, to show us how empty it is, and how dark.” — D.L. SNELL

“There are a very few authors still living today that I can point to and honestly say that they have inspired me. David Conyers has.” — BRIAN M. SAMMONS, editor of WORLD WAR CTHULHU

“David Conyers is the reigning king of the Cthulhu Mythos Down Under. With Conyers at the helm, you won’t be disappointed by your journey.” — HORRORSCOPE

“David Conyers is a rising star... So good are the scenarios he dreams up that I'm beginning to wonder if he is really a time traveler from the future.” — SF CROWSNEST

“David Conyers spawns with frightening ability scenes that could fuel the most terrifying of nightmares.” — DARK WOLF FANTASY REVIEWS

Cthulhu Resurgent © 2021 David Conyers

First published worldwide 2021.

All Rights Reserved All characters, events, companies and organizations portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or companies or organizations, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, by photocopying, recording or otherwise, without express permission of the author.

“The Spiraling Worm” (2007) with John Sunseri, The Spiraling Worm, Chaosium Inc, USA, © 2007 David Conyers and John Sunseri.

“The Road to Afghanistan” (2013), What Scares the Boogeyman? Perseid Publishing, USA, © 2013, David Conyers “The Eye of Infinity” (2011), The Eye of Infinity, Perilous Press, USA, © 2011 David Conyers.

“The Temporal Deception” (2015) with C.J. Henderson, Cthulhu Detective, USA, © 2015 David Conyers and C.J. Henderson.

“The Gravity Museum” (2021), Cthulhu Resurgent, USA, © 2021 David Conyers.

The character Harrison Peel, © 2005, 2021 David Conyers. The character John Dixon, © 2007 John Sunseri. The character Emerson Ash, © 2014, David Kernot. The character Jordan, © 2006 Brian M Sammons. The character Joan de Molina © 2015 CJ Henderson. The character Rudolph Pearson © 2005 William Jones.

Special thanks to Dori Barrett, David Anderson, Brian M. Sammons, David Kernot, William Jones, C.J. Henderson, John Goodrich, Shane Jiraiya Cummings, Angela Challis, Mike Davis, Glynn Owen Barrass, Jeffrey Thomas, Paul Mudie, Cody Goodfellow, George Anderson, Frank Ludlow, Bob Neilson, John Kenny, Konstantine Paradis, Peter Rawlik and Peter Clines.

All reprinted stories revised and expanded in this edition.

Cover Image © 2016 Can Stock Photo / grandfailure

CONTENTS

The Spiraling Worm | with John Sunseri

The Road to Afghanistan

The Eye of Infinity

The Temporal Deception | with CJ Henderson

The Gravity Museum

Copyright

About the Author

The Spiraling Worm

with John Sunseri

Vapors carried the scent of rotting death, but the source wasn’t a corpse.

Both alert and tense, Harrison Peel marched from the jungle mist towards the origin of the smell. Chimpanzees, unseen in the foliage, heckled the Australian, unsure whether they should fight him for the wounded prey crumpled in the clearing. A cut soldier.

Peel chambered a round into his Glock 9mm. His concern wasn’t that the Nigerian mercenary accompanying him would think him rash. His concern was that the butchered man before him might believe one of Peel’s bullets would end his life. Chances were, one would, unless Peel heard exactly what he expected to hear.

The victim didn’t resemble an American soldier, but three years as a POW could change a man in horrific ways, physically and mentally. Peel’s intel secured through spurious sources had reported Fargo’s capture three years earlier, by a fanatical guerrilla outfit that mutilated its team members, and the report hadn’t been far wrong. Lips missing, ears sliced and elongated, and finger bones showed where something had chewed off the meat. Rightfully, Fargo should have been dead, but some unnatural power kept him alive.

“I’m the man you’re looking for,” said the unnatural living abomination.

Peel crouched. “Why should I believe you?”

Crippled fingers, raw with grossly infected flesh, held a dog tag. The metal identifier belonged to Fargo, all right.

“I still need confirmation. Blood tests and fingerprints will do, and of course you already know we can’t perform those here.”

The man widened his palm. Long ago, someone had sliced his fingertips clean away, the stubs rough and mangled.

“Blood tests, then.”

Gunfire rattled in the distance, the chatter of automatic assault rifles. The Congolese rainforests were the battleground for Africa’s bloodiest international wars, had been so for decades. Peel had no desire to join the millions of casualties, so he hand-signaled Sergeant Moses Zouga and the rest of his mercenary outfit to join him. “Let’s take this one back to camp.”

“You sure about that, my friend?” Zouga came up behind Peel with his FN-FAL loaded and ready.

Peel stepped close to the mercenary. “Don’t let appearances deceive you, Sergeant Zouga. He’s one of the Spiraling Worm.”

The man’s eyes widened. “A sorcerer-soldier?”

“Why do you think he’s still alive?”

They looked together at the wounded man. Bent, rusted nails through his chest and forearms told of old mutilation, sores that had bled for years. Wounds that would have killed him, if he were still fully human.

Fargo — if it was Fargo — witnessed their repulsion and grinned with his lipless mouth. “I’m glad you trusted me, Major. I’m so glad.”

Peel wasn’t glad. His instincts told him this was all wrong. Even the jungle warned him, for he now heard what he most wished not to hear: nothing. The chimps, knowing more than they let on, had vanished.

But he had to take Fargo with him.

“Time to move out, Sergeant Fargo.”

——

“You can’t be serious, Peel,” said Jack Dixon, yawning. He’d gone to the kitchen with the phone to let his Jessica sleep, and now he sat at the breakfast bar with a couple fingers of Glenfiddich in front of him on the counter. Outside, crickets chirped in the darkness.

“You owe me, Dixon,” came the voice of Peel from half a world away.

“Bullshit,” said the NSA man. “If anyone owes anything, it’s you, you bald bastard. Besides — I’m NSA. If there’s anything to what you say, it’s a job for the CIA.”

Peel laughed, his voice crackly and thin over the cell connection. “For a cypher spook, you get around, my friend. Argentina, Australia, Italy, Antarctica, Russia—”

“You’ve got proof this Ackerman’s still alive?” asked Dixon, sipping his Scotch, closing his eyes and enjoying it.

“Proof? No. Just the word of a ruined soldier, and the desperation of a CIA black ops officer assassinated in Lagos. But if Ackerman is alive — and I think Fargo’s telling the truth about this — then you Americans are going to be in the middle of an international shit storm.”

“We’re good at that lately,” said Dixon, opening his eyes again. It was peaceful here in Virginia. The evening was cool and clear. He had a beautiful woman in his bed, and the Orioles were above .500. He really didn’t want to go to the Congo. That’s where that Ebola shit was from, and where tribes with unpronounceable names tried to wipe out each other with machetes and machine guns.

Dixon sighed. “Tell me more. Why are we in another shit storm if the news gets out?”

“Fargo says they were prisoners together,” said Peel. “Prisoners of the Ulimari Revolutionary Party.”

“URP,” said Dixon, memorizing the acronym. “And what is the Ulimari Revolutionary Party, exactly?”

“A cult,” said Peel. “A powerful one. They’re tough and dedicated and vicious, and they’ve been around in one form or another for almost a century, possibly much, much longer.”

“Yeah?” said Dixon, reaching for the bottle. “Good for them. What are they — Communists? Anarchists? Islamic Jihadists?”

“They’re trying to bring back the elder gods to the world,” said Peel. “Rather like those blokes in Vatican City you dealt with all those years ago.”

Dixon paused, the Glenfiddich hovering over his glass.

“And according to Fargo, they’re very close to doing it,” continued Peel.

Dixon shook his head slightly and poured. This time, he didn’t stop at two fingers. He picked up the glass and tossed half of its contents down his throat — then thought about it for a second and drained the other half. “Why me?” he asked finally. “Why bring us Americans in?”

“Ackerman’s a Green Beret, American Special Forces, SOG!” said Peel. “Isn’t that enough?”

“No,” said Dixon. “You’d play this close to the chest if you could. There’s some other reason you want me involved.”

Peel laughed, his voice breaking up as the connection faltered. “You’re not stupid, are you?”

“Of course I’m stupid,” said Dixon, sliding the empty glass down the counter toward the sink, sliding the whiskey bottle toward him. “I’m actually thinking of going to my boss with this.”

“Good,” said Peel. “I need your resources. Australia can’t put together an air strike team in anything like the speed we need it put together, and definitely not in Africa — but you can. Besides, you know how it goes; I’m out of favor back home these days.”

Dixon nodded. Their last operation together in Sydney, Peel had saved the city but killed thousands. His people didn’t court-martial him, but they wanted nothing to do with him anymore either. Peel had a dishonorable discharge on his service record now, and as far as the global intelligence services were concerned, he barely ranked as a deniable contractor.

“Air strike?” asked Dixon, returning to the conversation.

“It’s a rescue mission, mate,” crackled Peel’s voice. “But it could easily turn into a bloodbath. Call your boss and get back to me.” The Australian left the name and number of the hotel in Nairobi where he was staying, and hung up.

Dixon clicked off as well and carefully set the phone down. He looked at it for several long seconds as though it were a poisonous spider. For a moment, he seriously considered just ignoring the call — just pretending it had never happened. He could go back to the bedroom, wake up Jessica and make love to her, then fall into the arms of Morpheus for some comfortable slumber…

“Aw, fuck,” he said, and picked up the phone again.

Images filled his mind as he dialed Joss Plenary’s number. He remembered a horror that looked like a mile-wide oil slick churning up into South America, devouring everything it touched. He remembered a frozen pit full of dead Russians, their bodies riddled with bullets, their faces covered with icy blood. He remembered the burning, burgeoning form of the fire-god Cthugha as men chanted it into existence in the chamber of bones deep beneath Vatican City, and the terror he’d felt as it grew stronger and more violent… and he remembered Harrison Peel lying in a hospital bed, covered with radiation sores and third-degree burns.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whispered. “Goddamn. Oh, sorry, Caroline. Patch me through to the boss, will you?”

He tipped the bottle up to his lips as he listened to the voice of the night operator at NSA Headquarters. “Yeah, I know he’s asleep,” he said, swallowing. “But he will not be for long.”

——

Peel met Zouga at the bar in the Nairobi youth hostel, overlooking the swimming pool crowded with black kids splashing madly in the waters. The two men drank beer through straws, because the bees liked the taste, and if they stung you on the way down the throat, chances were you’d never breathe again.

Zouga checked out the Nordic backpackers in their high cut shorts and barely there t-shirts. Peel was thinking of his girlfriend Nicole, back in America now since she could not secure work in Australia despite a promise from the Australian Government to join their intelligence operations against horrors from other dimensions, so she was back with the FBI. As soon as he secured a reputable job, he would move to the United States so they could be together again. That was proving more difficult than he thought, considering his best friend in the world was a Nigerian private military contractor who dabbled mostly in illegal enterprises, worked only in Africa, and was the only man willing to pay Peel a decent wage. Despite his gratitude, Peel knew his reputation was sinking further by the minute associating himself with private military contractors, and the longer Nicola and he were apart the less likely their relationship would survive. He’d tried calling her this morning, but the lines wouldn’t connect.

“You sure you want out of this mission?” Peel asked, wondering if he had the stamina to drink another beer and remain sober, for the heat was wearing him down.

“Killing cultists in the Congo jungle, cultists who, mind you, mutilate themselves horrifically and don’t die from their wounds? No thank you.”

“It could get yourself more work with the CIA?”

“Yeah, and look how that worked out for us.” Zouga pointed to the pool, where a tall, dark-skinned, slim woman barely twenty walked the length of the pool wearing the tiniest of bikinis. “You won’t see sights like that in the Congo.”

Peel laughed. Happily married with children of his own, that didn’t stop Zouga from chatting up women at bars and pool sides, and he had a knack for gaining their interest. But he never followed through. Peel had to admire that in the man, that he was faithful.

“Peel, I’ll dig up what I can about Dirk Kinsella for you, but that’s it. I’m going home, building up the team again, get involved in some local work, and keep things simple for a while.”

“Fair enough,” Peel said, finishing his beer. He called over one of the hostel staff, ordered another because it was too hot.

“When are you picking up your contact from the airport?”

“I’m not,” Peel grinned. “He’s getting himself into town.”

“He’s been sub-Saharan before?”

Peel savored his beer, savored this moment, because it wouldn’t last. “I don’t think so.”

“So he wants to prove himself?”

“Don’t we all?” said Peel, draining his beer quickly.

——

Nairobi was not as humid as Dixon had expected, but it was just as dirty and teeming as he’d imagined. The matatu he strapped into rumbled and jostled through the crowded streets. He kept expecting the little bus to run over at least two people who milled unheedingly before it, but they kept melting away an instant before certain death.

“You British?” asked a fellow passenger. Dixon looked at the white face and saw a tourist — a nervous tourist, probably Spanish. The man clutched his camera tightly, kept his suitcase gripped between his feet, and there was a bulge in the front pocket of the man’s slacks that showed he’d moved his wallet up there. An average of four people per seat, so there was a lot of leaning and pushing. Dixon had the weight of at least five Kenyans against him.

“Afraid not,” said Dixon. “I’m American.”

“Oh,” said the other.

Dixon smiled at him and turned back to the front, where he watched three black bodies leap out of the way just as the matatu careened through them and further along the potholed street. Americans weren’t the most popular people on earth right now — he’d seen it enough over his career. He’d been in Madrid after the train bombings, and seen the demonstrations, felt the anger of the crowds chanting outside the embassy…

Maybe I should have flown in with the strike team, he thought, but shook his head. He needed to talk to Peel before anything else happened, talk to him face-to-face, and figure out what was wonky with this whole scenario and what the best move to make would be.

He whirled and whipped his hand down, hardening the edge of it and smacking the guy’s forearm with enough power to snap bones, and heard a crack and a howl of pain as the pickpocket’s wrist splintered beneath the jujitsu blow. The man had been sitting behind him and had somehow snaked his hand between the cracked plastic and fake-leather seats and worked Dixon’s wallet halfway out of his pocket before he’d sensed something wrong — and wouldn’t that have been a fun thing to explain to Plenary, how a common thief had stolen his identification and cash before he’d been in-country fifteen minutes?

“Driver!” Dixon barked, standing up and leaping out into the aisle to stop the would-be thief from escaping. “Get the police!”

The pickpocket snarled at Dixon, spat some words in what Dixon presumed was Kiswahili, and dove over the back of the seats, yelping as his wounded wrist banged into the side of the rocking bus. Dixon followed him down the aisle, trying to grab him between two local women in brightly colored print dresses, both of them holding babies. The passengers on the bus didn’t make a move to stop the man’s progress, and seemed to be subtly helping him on his way, moving confusedly out into the aisles as well.

“Damn it!” yelled Dixon and whipped around again as another Kenyan tried to snag his wallet as he passed. “That’s about fucking enough!”

The bus screeched to a stop, and the driver stood up in his seat and turned back to the uproar in the bus behind him. He stared at Dixon and pointed one massive black finger, shaking with rage.

“None of that language on my matatu!” he roared and advanced menacingly toward Dixon.

“Oh, for—” started Dixon, but then he realized that the first pickpocket had kicked open the back door of the bus and was scurrying through the crowds and traffic, making his escape. He thought about it for a second, turned back toward the bulky form of the driver, carefully extended both hands and raised the middle fingers.

The driver roared again and pulled himself faster down the aisle, but Dixon was already gone, dropping out the open door and jogging toward the sidewalk before he got obliterated by the dozens of cars and motorcycles whizzing by. Behind him, he could hear bellowing and screaming, but he didn’t look back, instead pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open.

Fucking Peel could come pick him up.

——

“You should have taken a taxi,” Peel laughed.

“And you should have met me at the airport!” Dixon countered.

Peel laughed again, “You insisted I didn’t.”

“I changed my mind.”

“TIA. This is Africa. Just because you left a message at my hotel, that isn’t a guarantee I’d get it.” He lifted his glass of cool Tusker beer. “Cheers mate, and thanks for coming.”

Dixon clinked glasses. The beer tasted good, drunk inside a little open terraced café. Beefy servers had sold them both plates of something that looked like mashed potato with a generous side of goat meat that was actually appetizing. Peel had warned against the salad, saying that Dixon would likely get the runs if he ate it, so he abandoned the greens on the side of his plate. The café was inconspicuous, away from the tourist venues. On the street, seen through the veranda, cars and people jostled everywhere, and now that it was midday, the weather had turned tropical.

“So many people on crutches? Or missing limbs?”

“Polio,” Peel cut at his thick meat. “Or war wounds. Kenya is surrounded by war, Sudan, the Congo, Uganda, Somalia… Many war refugees head here, where there is at least some medical and humanitarian aid.”

“You were in Somalia, weren’t you? I don’t mean recently, but when the UN was failing to keep the peace there?”

The Australian smiled. “You pretend not to know anything Dixon, but there you are reminding me of my past. Yes, my first overseas posting was Mogadishu, when I was a regular with the Australian Infantry in the early Nineties, 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. Long before joining the Intelligence Corp.”

“Is that how you know Africa?”

“Yeah, I was in Somalia for three years. The rest and recuperation breaks were here in Nairobi.”

It was Dixon’s turn to nod. “You should have told me about the taxis.”

Peel shook his head in mock pity. Then he examined their company, saw that no one paid them any genuine interest, and leaned in. “I thought you were coming with the strike team?”

Dixon matched Peel, moved forward so there was no mistaking he meant business too. “When Major Harrison Peel phones me from the other side of the world and drops the phrase ‘elder gods’ into what could have been a very pleasant morning, I know he’s serious. I know that you know that the NSA and my government know a lot about cosmic intrusions and dimensional anomalies, if you’ll excuse my masters’ jargon. But don’t assume for a minute that anyone besides me in the strike team will know what you’re talking about. This is not an official Code-89 sanctioned mission. There will be one story you tell them, and one you tell me. So, tell me.”

“About what’s really going on?”

Dixon nodded.

Peel looked out into the Nairobi streets. Dixon’s eyes followed. A pair of Kenyan soldiers marched past with machine pistols causally slung over their shoulders. In a park, barbed wire was the fence that separated the garden from the pavement. A little further down, two teenage boys sold sticks of char-grilled corn and roasted nuts. So very different to the American and European locales Dixon was used to. He wasn’t sure he was up to Africa, let alone an African assignment involving cosmic intrusions.

“I checked out William Fargo,” continued Peel. “He definitely is one of yours. The man was Special Forces, a Green Beret recruited into the CIA’s Special Operations Group. He was under Major Charles Ackerman’s command.”

“I checked him out too, Peel,” Dixon drank his beer. What had resembled mashed potato turned out more like overcooked porridge and was about as tasteless, yet strangely it complemented the meat. “Three years ago, Ackerman led a SOG squad of eighteen soldiers — Fargo included — into the northeastern so-called Democratic Republic of the Congo. Their mission: to destroy a key URP base in the jungle and assassinate their leader. Only thing was, Ackerman and company got captured, tortured. God knows what else. And then three days later — out of the blue — he calls in an air strike. If we believe the reports, it saw him sacrifice himself for the ‘greater good,’” Dixon made quotation marks with his hands to emphasize his point. “A blast to take out the enemy once and for all. Officially Ackerman is missing in action, unofficially he’s dead, a hero. Now you’re telling me he’s alive, and possibly in league with this cult?”

Peel nodded. “That’s the official story.”

“I thought you were going to say that. But this guy is a Green Beret. They don’t just roll over and play for the other team because you offer them a cookie.”

“Well, the unofficial story is better. Has to be. I’m surprised, Dixon. You haven’t asked the most important question ever asked in the history of humanity.”

Dixon took another sip of his beer and wondered what Jessica was doing today. As far as she believed, he was attending a conference in Portland, Oregon. She had no idea at all the dangers he was about to face in the jungles of the world’s worst war zone — other than perhaps the Middle East or Afghanistan. She still wouldn’t understand, if he came back, why he’d gotten up in the middle of the night to drink Glenfiddich to help him sleep.

“What question would that be, Peel?”

“Why? Why were Ackerman and his team there in the first place? It’s not like the US has much interest in the Congo, not for a long time. And Australia is no better.”

“And you’re going to tell me why?”

“I’m going to tell you what Fargo believes.”

“Summoning of an elder god?”

Peel smiled, pleased with himself. “The Congolese people call this god the Spiraling Worm. This isn’t the first time they’ve tried to break the dimensional rift and release it. If they do, who knows what will happen in Africa, but from experience you and I both know it won’t be good. They’ve been trying for hundreds of years. One day they’re going to get it right.”

“So what’s stopped them each time?”

“I don’t know,” Peel licked his lips. “But I’ll bet any money that’s what Ackerman was trying to stop. That’s what his masters feared the URP might actually do. Perhaps the air strike he called in was his last-ditch attempt to stop them. And here I was hoping you’d dug up the old files, and would tell me.”

Dixon shook his head, pushed back the plate of half-eaten food, no longer hungry. That was jetlag and elder gods for you. “I’d guess it was a CIA-sanctioned black op, and you know how it goes between NSA and our brothers. I can’t even tell if it is a Code-89 classified mission.” He mentioned again the clearance that both their governments used to denote a mission with supernatural or alien components. “There was some operation in the Congo back in the 1960s involving a ‘dimensional rip’, but that involved our predecessor organization. But what about this Sergeant Fargo? I’m assuming I can talk to him before we meet the team.”

Peel grinned, a poker player about to reveal a strong hand. “You can see him right now if you want?”

“Really? Surprise me. Tell me where you have him hidden.”

Peel shrugged. “One other complication, mate. I needed to get Fargo somewhere safe, and there is nowhere west of here that would do. I had to call in another favor, another friend. You know Kenya used to be a British colony, and the Brits still have a lot of investments here, including MI6 safe houses and hospitals?”

“You didn’t, did you?”

Peel heartily attacked his slab of goat's flesh with his cutlery. “I know you’ve worked with him too, this British agent, we both have. But now that he knows a little, he wants to know a lot. He’s intrigued, and he wants to come with us, into the heart of darkness.”

Dixon almost choked on his beer, used his sleeve to wipe the amber liquid from his mouth. “You’re talking about James fucking Figgs, aren’t you?”

Peel nodded again. And all Dixon could think was, the Australian had been doing a lot of that since Dixon’s arrival in Africa.

——

“Nice to see you again, Yank,” said Figgs, smiling.

“Yeah,” said Dixon, shaking the man’s hand. “Good times.”

“I should think not,” said Figgs, letting go. “Seems like the only time we get together, you and I, someone’s trying to destroy the world.” The British Secret Service agent was as smug and coy as Dixon remembered him, and peculiarly, wearing a suit and tie in this heat. Perhaps such clothes helped to cultivate the image of a man in the know.

“Maybe next time,” said Dixon, “they’ll try it in Bermuda. I wouldn’t mind that assignment.”

Figgs laughed. “You’re here to see your boy, then?”

“Where is he?” asked Dixon, looking around the safe house.

They stood in a pleasant room in a nondescript house off the Thika road north of Nairobi, fans lazily spiraling on the ceiling keeping the temperature bearable. Figgs took a sip from his sweating glass of ice water, nodded, and motioned for the Australian and the American to follow him.

In the hallway stood a brawny hunk of meat squeezed into chinos and khakis, but though his uniform held no hint of military, the man’s demeanor and posture screamed SAS — as did the submachine gun he held casually in one beefy hand.

“Visitors to see our guest,” said Figgs.

“Haven’t eaten recently, have you?” asked the guard, and Dixon felt a flutter of panic. How bad did Fargo look?

The sentinel stepped aside, and Figgs reached forward and grabbed the doorknob. He turned back to Dixon and Peel and gave them a grim smile. “After you,” he said, and pulled the door open.

——

“Who won the Series last year?” asked the monster on the bed. Figgs’ medics had done what they could with the man’s injuries, but for all their efforts the soldier still looked like something death had chewed up and spat out as too disgusting.

He smoked a cigarette, and whenever he inhaled wisps of smoke came through the holes in his cheek and the ragged vents in his chest. It was the creepiest thing Dixon had ever seen and wondered why the man wasn’t dead. Elder god magic, undoubtedly. Peel, standing as far back as he could without appearing unsociable, looked like he was about to be sick. Figgs standing next to him just looked bored.

“White Sox,” said Dixon. “The year before, it was the Red Sox.”

“No shit?” asked Fargo, surprised. “Boston finally won one?”

“What’s happening out there, Bill?” asked Dixon, forcing himself to move his chair a bit closer to the monstrosity, forcing the bile back down his throat. “How did you escape?”

“It was Major Ackerman,” said Fargo, smiling that rictus smile at the NSA agent. “He got the chains off himself and me, and we made it to the jungle before the URP bastards knew we’d escaped. They came after us, but we had a head start on them, and we killed two fuckers and took their radios. Got hold of this Aussie, here.” He shook his head at Peel, and Dixon saw the cheekbones through the bloody, ragged holes in the man’s face. “He was nice enough to pick me up.”

“Where’s Ackerman?” asked Dixon.

Fargo turned back toward the American and blinked. “Still out there. He took a bullet and couldn’t move as fast or far as me, so he’s hiding out there waiting for retrieval.”

“Shot?” asked Figgs mildly. “You told me that Major Ackerman was feverish and delirious?”

“You get shot in that goddamned malaria factory, limey!” spat Fargo, something — panic? anger? — leaping into his eyes. “See if you don’t come down with a fucking fever!”

“With a wound like that,” said Peel from his corner, “he’s probably dead by now.”

“Not if you’ve been initiated in to the Cult,” countered Fargo, showing with his hands the ritualized wounds etched all over his body.

“All right, all right,” said Dixon. “And you think Ackerman’s still out there? You don’t think they would have recaptured him, or that he’s dead of exposure by now?”

“He’d better not be. Or else we’re fucked. The Major knows all the details about the ritual. When it’s gonna happen, where it’s gonna happen. If he’s dead, those bastards are going to unleash something that’ll make Hiroshima look like a fart in a wind tunnel.”

“The ritual,” said Peel, standing on the other side of the bed now. It was unnerving how Peel could move around a room silently and creep up on people. “Tell us about the ritual. Who, or what, are the URP trying to summon?”

Fargo closed his eyes as much as he could, because of ragged and ripped lids, and took the cigarette out of his mouth. For a long moment, Dixon thought that the man would not answer, that their questions had exhausted him so much that he was going to pass out or even die… But then the eyes opened again, dry and puffy from lack of tears.

“The Spiraling Worm,” said Fargo.

——

“So what’s ‘The Spiraling Worm’?” asked Dixon, checking his M16A2.

“Fuck if I know,” said Figgs cheerfully, looking down at the jungle whizzing by beneath them.

“I wasn’t asking you,” said Dixon, wishing again that Peel hadn’t involved the Brits, and this Brit in particular. “Peel, you’re the expert on this kind of crap. Is it a god we’re dealing with?”

“Probably,” said the Australian, tapping at the keys on his laptop. “It’s mentioned in a book I read years ago, The Masked Messenger, so it’s well known in African and Middle Eastern folklore. Some sources name it Ahtu, or perhaps that is a separate god. On the cosmic front, it’s at least some kind of inter-dimensional monster that the URP keeps trying to bring to Earth. Plenary’s boys back in Maryland are working on details right now.”

“So what do we know about the bad guys?” asked Dixon. The three of them sat near the doors of the old MIL Mi-8 ‘borrowed’ from the Ugandan government for a princely sum. Behind them in the cargo bay of the chopper were the other ten members of the strike force — eight American SEALS and two of Figgs’ SAS men, all of them well-armed, all of them quietly going over and over their equipment as they neared the insertion point. Stowed around and between the soldiers were crates loaded with second-hand M16A1s, foil packets of MREs and medicines, and between Dixon’s legs was the prize package — a stack of old Penthouse and Barely Legal magazines.

“What d’ye mean by ‘bad guys’?” asked Figgs, turning away from the view and smiling at the American. “The chaps we’re meeting now, or the URP?”

“There aren’t any good guys down here,” said Peel, finally looking up from his computer. “It’s just that some are slightly more trustworthy than others.”

“What’s the story with the URP, then?” asked Dixon. “What are they trying to accomplish?”

“I told you,” said Figgs. “Destruction of the world.”

“You’d think taking over the world would be enough,” griped Dixon. “How come everyone wants to destroy the fucking thing?”

“It’s the elder gods, or outer gods as others sometimes call them,” said Peel calmly, as though his words weren’t the rankest insanity. Dixon wondered what his friends back home in Virginia would make of the conversation they were carrying on right now… “You know about Cthugha, of course, and I assume you’ve done some research on the other ones since our adventure with the Shoggoths, correct?”

“I’ve looked into them,” said Dixon, turning away and staring out the window. He’d never particularly wanted to be the point man against the omnipotent entities that waited arrayed against the Earth, but it had just turned out that way. Knowing that Peel and Figgs probably felt the same way as him should have been a small comfort, but wasn’t.

He looked outside the shuddering helicopter, at the mass of green zipping beneath them. Africa had given him a royal dose of culture shock, but nothing like the sea of jungle below. It stretched forever, broken only by the occasional fast-flowing murky brown rivers snaking through the undergrowth. As for signs of civilization, he could see none. He knew better than to believe otherwise, for soldiers in the thousands trudged through the green mess every day. He wondered how they survived, how he would if he found himself down there alone. This was a world so far away from his days as a cop in the urban environment, before his recruitment into NSA, and later his Code-89 clearance. Here, he felt certain the mist-shrouded canopy would swallow him whole and consume him forever, if he let it get to him.

“Plenary had me studying the stuff in my spare time,” Dixon explained, escaping his own distractions, “but it’s a mess, man. Full of contradictions, flat-out lies, wild speculations. You’ve got Elder Gods and Outer Gods — which you’re now telling me might be the same thing — and Great Old Ones and High Priests and then you’ve got these cults all over the world with their own agendas, their own rituals… and the goddamned books aren’t much help, either, though they’re sure good at giving you nightmares after you read ‘em.”

“Does it make you feel insignificant?” asked Peel, unsmiling. “As though there are gulfs of blackness pressing in on our tiny planet and that we’re all doomed to eventual destruction, no matter how hard we fight against the madness?”

“No,” said Dixon, staring at the Australian, wishing he’d kept that last comment to himself. “It makes me want to nuke the fuck out of ‘em as they come at us. It’s worked out for us so far, hasn’t it?”

Peel winced slightly. Dixon remembered the sickness that had ravaged Peel’s body, tearing apart his healthy blood cells and wrecking his balance, his digestion, his equilibrium, the sickness that had come from the low-yield nuke he’d detonated in Sydney. Peel had survived that. But then these days when the man smiled, it was a grim one.

“Sure,” said Peel. “It’s worked out for us. And you’d better hold on to that attitude as long as you can. Because it’s us and other people like us who’ve held the blackness at bay for all of human history. I told you before that the URP has been trying to bring the Worm here for centuries. And now that you’re committed, I can tell you they were foiled at least twice. Once by Ackerman and his men a few years ago, and once back in 1983 by a British force. And I suspect that there have been a few instances where men banded together to stop these mad bastards.”

“Bollocks, Peel! How about this time we fucking eliminate them?” asked Figgs. “Save our counterparts twenty years from now the trouble?”

“Works for me,” said Dixon. “And how about the folks we’re meeting now, the KLF?”

“The Kasai Liberation Front,” said Figgs. “Our noble allies in the fight against… What are we fighting against, Peel?” the sarcastic Brit taunted.

“Them or us? Them it’s their own government,” said the Australian, looking at a light that had just started flashing on his laptop. He flipped it open again and started hitting keys. “As for their ideals, I couldn’t tell you. But the one language they understand is money.”

“In any case, they’re our buddies,” said Figgs, smiling at Dixon. “And they’ve agreed to guide us into the deep jungle where the URP hangs out. We go in, snatch your wounded man, collect what intel we can, and get back to the wonders of Nairobi. Simple.”

“And then we get some coordinates from Ackerman, relay them to the American flyboys, and bomb the hell out of another beastie,” said Peel distractedly as he responded to whatever alert had come through on his computer. “Uh-oh,” he said.

“We don’t like ‘uh-oh’,” said Dixon, turning to look at the Australian. “What the hell does ‘uh-oh’ mean?”

“Your smart NSA lads have finally tracked down the Spiraling Worm references,” said Major Peel, his eyes scanning rapidly down the page. “And we’re dealing with a biggie this time.”

“A biggie?” asked Figgs, eyes narrowing. “What’s that mean?”

“Nyarlathotep,” said Peel, shaking his head. “The Masked Messenger. The Crawling Chaos.”

“Oh goodie,” said Dixon, feeling his heart sink. “When I was growing up, I always wanted to go up against something called ‘The Crawling Chaos.’”

“You’re in luck, boyo!” said Figgs, speaking louder as the chopper banked into a turn and descended. “It’ll be like pitching to what’s-his-name… Babe Ruth! Strike him out, and you’ll be famous!”

Dixon didn’t respond as the helicopter slowly lost altitude, heading for a bai nestled into the green carpet beneath them. He looked down at the package of porno mags on the floor at his feet and grimaced. With such coin they were trying to buy their way into the jungle where an American was at this moment bleeding out, an American with coordinates in his head that would let them stop an obscenity from manifesting itself on their fragile planet.

“And why did you want to come along on this little jaunt, Figgs?” he asked, gripping his rifle tighter as the chopper skimmed the treetops.

“You Yanks are loud, and obnoxious,” said Figgs, sitting back and enjoying the ride, “but you throw the greatest parties on Earth!”

“It’s like a bad joke,” Peel muttered. “An American, a Brit, and an Australian walk into a bar… or a jungle in this case—”

And then they were hovering over the bai, the clearing in the trees, and there was no more time to talk as the contraption loudly lowered itself to the ground.

——

“Now what?” asked Dixon.

They stood in the middle of the green wet field, crates piled around them, and from the jungle Dixon stared into the green hell and heard nothing. The pilot had kept the engines going the whole time they were unloading, and hadn’t wasted a second lifting off after they completed off-loading the munitions and provisions, flying back to Entebbe and civilization.

“They’re out there in the trees, sir,” said Lieutenant Thompson, the commander of the SEALS, who had moved up protectively to flank Dixon. “At least six men, probably more.”

“Eight, that I can spot,” said Sergeant Dunthorpe, the more senior of the SAS men Figgs had brought with him.

“Nine,” said Peel tiredly, bending over and grabbing a bottle of water from the cooler at their feet. “You missed the guy in the dirt over there,” and gestured with his head even as he twisted the top off the bottle of Cascade Springs.

Dunthorpe and Thompson turned to look at the jumble of earth and foliage that the Australian had indicated, and at that moment the KLF decided that they’d seen enough and that there weren’t any armies waiting to cut them down the second they stepped out of the tree line. Dixon tensed his fingers on his assault rifle, but he sensed that his men and the men Figgs had brought were probably more than twice the equal of the ragtag troupe who swaggered out from the jungle. So let himself relax a bit.

“Mbote! Jambo!” yelled the KLF leader as he strode toward them. “My most beloved gunrunners!”

“Fucking yahoo,” said Figgs in a low voice, then raised his arms in a salute. “Captain Kazumu!”

“It is good to see you again, my English friend!” said the Congolese man, his mouth splitting into a wide smile. “And you have brought us fine presents from the world, have you not?”

“I have indeed, young fellow.” Figgs snapped his fingers, and it took Dixon a moment to realize Figgs suggested it was Dixon who should jump to his attention. “The package, young man, the package.”

Hiding his anger, Dixon handed over the collection of magazines, lighter than they should have been. Figgs beamed when Kazumu tore open the pack, called out to his soldiers in their local tongue Lingala, generating a cheer. He was showing them a full-frontal nude of a young lady from Wisconsin honored with the title Miss July. Then, just as quickly, he hid the magazines, much to the disappointment of his men. “Later,” he said in English, before switching back to his local tongue. “Oh, and the guns?” he asked, smiling.

Figgs grinned with a closed mouth as he tried not to breathe in his old friend’s foul breath. “In the crates.”

More orders, and soon the team of rough-and-ready soldiers forced open the crates and snatched the MI6A1s. Several let loose bursts of hot metal into the salt-rich pools of water to test their capacity to kill.

“Opinions, Dixon?”

Dixon turned, surprised that Peel had snuck up on him so easily. It was surreal, standing in the heart of Africa amid gun-crazy revolutionaries on Her Majesty’s payroll. “Let’s see, my friend. I’m not a soldier like you, but first thoughts: undisciplined, noisy, they smoke and drink and leave litter everywhere. And that’s all I’ve worked out within only five minutes of meeting them.”

Peel nodded, “Yes, I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed. We better double our efforts not to leave a trail. Otherwise, the URP will have no problem working out who we’ve joined up with.”

On autopilot Dixon scanned the jungle, as if he expected to see the mutilated soldiers eyeballing him already, his head in the crosshairs of their weapons. But he saw nothing.

“Are you okay?” Peel asked quietly.

Dixon nodded, wondering if his expression betrayed his fear. “I’m fine. Just a little queasy after the rough landing.” Determined not to let this world wear him down, he looked back at Figgs, who was heatedly negotiating with Kazumu. “What are you thinking?” he asked the Major. “I know you’re thinking something bad because you look like the cat smelling a rat.”

“Me?” Peel asked. His eyes too were scanning the jungle, as if he too worried about their exposed position in the bai. “I’m shit scared. This is the Congo after all.”

Dixon snorted. “Glad to hear I have company.”

“Hey!” Peel called out, his conversation with Dixon forgotten. “You’ll kill yourself doing that!” He snatched a new M16A1 from a young soldier who was peering down the barrel of the weapon and shaking it, concerned about a jam. “Like this,” Peel showed him as best he could without the use of a language they both understood, how to hold a gun safely. Yes, thought Dixon, the soldiers of the Kasai Liberation Front were most definitely a liability.

“You said three hundred guns!” Kazumu was now screaming at Figgs, and Figgs in response was all red, eyeballing the shorter African man, ready to scream back. “No deal. I’m not taking you to Ackerman now.”

“Bollocks!” Figgs spat. “One hundred guns was the deal. One hundred.”

“And you forgot the Stinger missiles.”

“Stinger missiles?” Figgs fumed. “Why they hell would Her Majesty ever consider giving you people one of those?”

——

The jungle was thick and horrible. Tiny stingless bees crawled into their armpits and crotches to suck on their salty moisture, leeches bled their feet until the parasites grew enormous inside their boots and burst, and spider webs seemingly from nowhere entangled their faces. The SEALs in the lead hacked with their machetes, forging a path through a wilderness so thick it was impossible to see over twenty feet in any direction. The worst, thought Dixon morosely, looking at his wrinkled skin, was the wet. An earlier downpour had saturated him, then the muddy earth underneath, and then the river they had to cross where a gaboon viper nearly bit Dunthorpe on the hand. If it had, everyone knew Dunthorpe would have not lived to tell the tale.

Dixon had expected wild animals everywhere, this was the jungle after all, but the snake had been the largest creature they encountered. Bugs, spiders, scorpions and ants were everywhere, and they could hear birds in the trees, but that was it. Light filtered through the canopy one hundred and fifty feet above as shards of speckled beams. When they had marched for five hours, Dixon fainted.

“Sunstroke, young man,” Figgs explained later as he forced Dixon to drink another canteen of water. “When you live your entire life in a climate where you don’t need to sweat, your skin forgets what to do when it must. I know, my friend, because it used to happen to me all the time in Asia.”

Kazumu and his men laughed, a joke at Dixon’s expense. Angry, Dixon stood tall. He hated that he was out of his depth, undoubtedly the only man here without jungle or other survival training to see him through. His lack, however, only made him more determined, more certain that he would show them all he meant business, that he was here for a purpose. Other than perhaps Peel and Figgs, none of them really knew what they were up against. How he wished this was a simple assignment, like infiltrating a Chicago gang of drug-runners who had turned to the worship of elder gods, rather than this scenario of insane rebels in a failed, impoverished nation.

They resumed marching. Dixon felt his stomach bubble and complain, and hoped that he didn’t have the runs, or a worse disease. The KLF soldiers talked loudly. They paid no attention to where they stepped and threw litter everywhere. Ahead of him, one did a quick shit in public view, left in their path so that everyone behind him had to be careful not to step in it. Dixon sighed. He just wanted to go home, to Jessica, to bed, to sleep for a thousand years in comfort.

Later, when a soldier tried to shoot a monkey no one else could see, and startling them all, Dixon approached Lieutenant Thompson. The SEAL seemed to carry about four times more than the weight he was, even though his own pack felt like a million tons.

“Yes, sir?”

“Thompson, can we do anything to discipline the KLF? They’re going to get us exposed at this rate. Shot at by god knows who.”

“What do you suggest, sir?” Thompson replied, his frustrated tone suggesting that he had already tried everything.

Then it came to him. Back on the MIL helicopter, Dixon’s instincts had told him to hang onto a dozen copies of Penthouse, which he’d stashed in his pack. Now he was glad he had. “What about this for an idea?” he handed over the magazines still in their plastic wrappers. “You speak a local tongue, don’t you?”

“I have the basics of Kiswahili, sir. I’ve heard some men conversing in that tongue.”

Dixon nodded. He had, after all, requested SEALs with prior African experience. “Good, Lieutenant. Keep Kazumu out of this, but let the other soldiers know that if they stop littering, shut their mouths and keep their wits about them, there is one of these for each of them when we reach camp.”

Thompson smiled, liking the idea. There was no internet in the jungle, no way to download porn online. “Yes, sir. Right away.”

Ten minutes later, the column miraculously fell silent. Kazumu, who believed he had the monopoly on controlling his men, became suspicious. His own trick, of promising and delivering only in small doses, the images of naked women had kept his troops in line to his low standards. But two could play at that game. Yes, you sly bastard, Dixon thought to himself smugly before the wetness of this hothouse began bothering him again, you’ve still got it. Jungles might not be his home, but he was as proficient as all hell in social engineering wherever he found himself.

It was only then that he realized Peel had been missing for several hours.

“Where is he, Lieutenant?”

“Major Peel, sir? He’s with Dunthorpe, bringing up the rear. It worried him we might have someone following us.”

This concerned Dixon more than he expected, and for more reasons than just one. There was a secret he’d been keeping between Lieutenant Thompson and himself, and suddenly it seemed important that he share this information with another, just in case he became compromised. Unfortunately, the only other person he could trust this information with was Peel, and he was not here. Figgs was turning out to be just a little too friendly with his Congolese buddies for Dixon’s liking.

——

The trail in the mud was obvious, left by Spiraling Worm cultists. Missing toes and exposed bones showed in the footprints of bare feet. Nails and bone ornaments fallen from their soldiers were still fresh with their own blood. The single tooth discovered in the root of a tree was most definitely human, filed sharply for the eating of raw flesh.

“They’ve been following us since the bai, sir.” Sergeant Dunthorpe explained.

Peel nodded. The implications were far reaching. “They knew where we were before we even got here.”

“Seems that way, sir.”

Dunthorpe and Peel had double-backed, three kilometers behind the primary group, a standard tactic to be certain that no one had picked up their trail. Peel suspected that several other rebels, DRC soldiers or foreign mercenaries operating in the jungle might be onto them. He had underestimated the Spiraling Worm and the URP, who had been invisible from the onset, aware of every step they had taken. They might even be watching them now, for all they knew. In this undergrowth, he could be certain of nothing.

Uncharacteristic in an SAS man, fear edged into Dunthorpe’s tone, “What are we up against, Major?”

Peel looked into the jungle, thick and depressingly oppressive. He had gained most of his experience in jungle warfare in South East Asia despite his extensive operations in Africa. In Asia he had been with Figgs of all people. Those jungles were different. They didn’t stretch forever, and there were villages and rice farms only a day’s march from any point. Here, the next village could be twenty or thirty days away. Here they were truly alone.

“A hundred years ago, Dunthorpe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was the private fiefdom of King Leopold II of Belgian. Determined not to be the little man of European royalty, he milked his one and only colony for everything he could squeeze out of it. Rubber was the market back then, and the Congo Free State had rubber in abundance. He turned twenty-million Congolese into slaves and forced them to collect all the rubber they could. His men killed their children, raped their wives, and cut off the hands of the men who did not cooperate. Cannibal soldiers from other parts of the Congo recruited into Leopold’s army were told they could eat any tribe member who did not obey the colonial authorities. In the space of thirty years Leopold was indirectly responsible for the death of ten million Congolese people, one of every two people. He’s up there with Hitler and Stalin on the genocide front, and still his country reveres him as a hero.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

Peel looked straight at Dunthorpe. “History teaches us much. The Congo is hell on earth, and we ask ourselves why? It’s because history made it this way. The white western civilization taught the people of the Congo how to mutilate and kill, and supported the local custom of eating each other, and how to disrespect our fellow man purely because of skin color. Is it not surprising that this cult, these Spiraling Worm people, has grown strong by using the very same terror tactics we taught them?”

“No, sir, I guess not.” Dunthorpe still appeared confused, trying to relate a history lesson to the here and now. “Does this change anything, sir?”

Peel shrugged, wondering why this country was getting under his skin, what it was about this place that reflected his own demons. “Not really, I just have this feeling someone has screwed us, but we just don’t know how yet.”

“And in the meantime?”

“Don’t get caught,” Peel was serious. “Otherwise we face the risk of rape, mutilation, murder, mutilation and as a dish for someone’s dinner.”

Dunthorpe looked like he wanted to swallow. “Then how did Fargo and Ackerman survive so long as their prisoners?”

Peel’s smile was shallow. “Yes, I’ve been thinking that same thought for some time now. But let’s get moving, it will be dark in a few hours, and we don’t want anyone to catch us out here alone.”

——

In Langley, Virginia, the remote CIA buildings hidden in the surrounding forests were lit up like Christmas trees in the frosty night. Joss Plenary raced his BMW to the checkpoint, showed his identification, and the guards ushered him in. Strange to think his top agent was on the other side of the world, sweating with the incessant heat in a country Plenary had no desire to visit, but a country that was causing him every kind of headache since that bothersome Australian called Peel came back into his world.

Once he bypassed internal security, another guard escorted Plenary to Brendan Haverkamp’s office. They were on the same side, the CIA and the NSA, and both Code-89 cleared, but that didn’t mean they liked each other, or trusted each other.

Even though it was two in the morning, Plenary saw many analysts and strategists at work. They had a digital map of the Middle East on the wall which they were all fussing over. He didn’t want to know.

Haverkamp showed Plenary into his office and then shut the door. Outside, through the window, a helicopter was taking off.

“Can’t sleep, Haverkamp?”

“I’m doing you the fucking favor here, Plenary.”

“That’s why you got me to drive, right?” Plenary had been inside the CIA building only five times in his career, and all was because of nights like this.

“You still in contact with Dixon and his team?”

Plenary raised an eyebrow, surprised that Haverkamp knew his agent’s name, let alone that he was running a black op in Central Africa. “They’re under the canopy, inserted into northeast DRC. Now something or someone is jamming their signals.”

“That’s a fucking shame. I worked with Dixon once, when I was Section Head in South America. Considering what we saw down there, I’d be insane not to have a running file on him, which I do. I wouldn’t like to close it.”

To change the subject, Haverkamp threw a dozen black and white photographs on the table. They were of a corpse, lying in the mud, in a jungle on the outskirts of an African village. The dead man was ebony skinned, muscled and lean. His body was pockmarked with black sores oozing thick tar. Most prominent, the flesh was missing from his face, including his tongue, nose and eyes.

“It’s like it’s been—”

“Eaten off,” finished Haverkamp. “That’s what Ackerman thought too.”

“Ackerman?”

“That is why we are meeting, isn’t it?” Haverkamp frowned. “You wanted to know about our little black op down there a few years ago?”

Plenary nodded, picked up several photos so he could examine them more closely. “These look like bullet wounds.”

“Hundreds of bullet wounds.”

“But they didn’t kill him?”

Haverkamp shook his head.

“Who is he?”

“He’s the former leader of the URP, before Ackerman and his Special Forces ended his life. But I think you should be more worried, Plenary, about what chewed his face off.”

“Chewed?”

“Yes,” Haverkamp pushed forward a photograph that highlighted the gory detail, sharp teeth marks in the flesh. “Ackerman reported seeing a mask on this man, a mask that had grown into his face.”

Plenary undid his tie, realizing only then how hot he had become. “And what happened to this mask?”

Haverkamp shrugged. “The mask disappeared shortly before we lost contact with Ackerman, shortly before he called in that strike.”

With a shudder, Plenary threw the photos back on the desk. He was getting too old for this kind of work. Fighting terrorists and foreign spies was easy, but monsters from other dimensions, that was just insane. He wished he had never been Code-89 cleared. He didn’t want this life. “What’s your point, Haverkamp? You wouldn’t have come to me with this personally, not unless you had something very important to tell me.”

Haverkamp leaned back in his large leather chair, put his hands behind his head. He obviously enjoyed being in control, but was that surprising in a hidden world where no one seemed to control anything? “What I’m saying, Plenary, is that your man better fucking know what he’s doing, otherwise he’s going to create a shit storm which none of us are going to come out of unscathed. None of us!”

——

The camp was a carnival of boisterous yelling and singing, of African reggae music and the occasional burst of machinegun fire, all of which carried for many miles through the Congo jungle. The bonfire was visible at half that distance, even through the foliage. When Peel and Dunthorpe walked into the camp at 2200 hours, guided only by their light intensifier goggles, they collapsed into the circle of bedrolls erected by the SEALs. Both men received an MRE, which they devoured. In the thick air, mosquitoes squealed.

“Anything we should know?” Figgs asked, enjoying a shot of Scottish whiskey, which he had no intention of sharing.

Exhausted, Peel nodded, flinched at the sound of automatic gunfire sprayed into the air by drunken troops. In the half-light he saw that another soldier was masturbating over the picture of a young naked girl. “Ackerman’s captors know we’re here.”

“The URP?”

“Yes.” Peel showed them the teeth and bones he had collected, described what they had seen.

“And they didn’t take you?” It was Dixon who asked, materializing from the darkness.

With a shake of his head, Peel finished his meal, careful to stash the wrapper in his pack.

“Does that surprise you?”

“Yes, mate,” Peel sounded exhausted. “It does very much.”

Dixon walked away, but not before discretely signaling to Peel that they needed to talk. Five minutes later, when Peel finished another canteen of iodinated water, he sought the American.

“What’s up?”

“Peel, this situation is rapidly escalating out of control. We haven’t got the faintest idea what’s going on out there.”

“I know, mate. I can’t help feeling like we’re walking into a trap.”

“Me either, which is why I’ve got to tell you something.”

Peel cocked an eyebrow.

“The air strike, it’s on standby for now. Actually, two teams are on standby, the MIL helicopter to get us out when we need to, and…”

“And?”

“And in Nairobi, a C-130 Hercules transport loaded with a MOAB bomb.”

Impressed, Peel whistled. “Massive ordnance air blast bomb?”

“Yeah, biggest fucking bomb outside a nuclear strike, weighing 9.5 tons. This baby can obliterate everything within an eight hundred foot radius, and can knock over tanks. They just roll them out of the Hercules’ cargo bay mid-flight.”

“And no one knows about this?”

“Thompson does, and now you. Plenary was very clear. If we find these URP bastards, we are to do away with them immediately. No debriefing Ackerman first. Understand?”

Peel nodded slowly, not completely happy with this outcome. He wanted to understand Ackerman’s connection to the CIA operatives Chad Carter and Dirk Kinsella, and the mystery Pentagon man who pulled all the strings. But then, he didn’t feel like he had a choice in this situation. “Okay.”

“It’s what you wanted, remember. This is the deal; you know our standard call frequencies, and the procedure for the pickup: we give our GPS location and the code ‘Picnic Hamper’. This brings in the MIL from Entebbe. However, if we want to bring in the air strike, it’s the same deal with the location, but the code is ‘Home Delivery’. Don’t get the two mixed up. If you call it in, there is no call sign to stop them, not from ground zero at any rate. You’ll have approximately one hour before the drop.”

Peel looked back into camp, at soldiers enjoying their party in a world far from civilization. He saw a man enter a tent, excuse himself when he saw someone in there ahead of him. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

“In case Thompson or I don’t make it. I’d tell Figgs, but he’s very thick with these KLF bozos, whom I don’t trust at all.”

Peel nodded in agreement, “You think the KLF might have sold us out the URP?”

Dixon shrugged. “It’s a possibility.”

Peel turned back to the man waiting at the tent, noticed that he had an erection. Then he saw another man step out of the tent, buckling his pants tight. The first man changed places with him.

Dixon spoke up, “That doesn’t look good.”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Peel. “Shall we investigate?”

By the time they got there, another of the Congolese KLF men had reached the tent flap and shook his head at them.

“Not for you,” he said in thick English. “This soldier tent.”

“Really?” said Peel in an icy voice. “Then what the hell are you doing here?” He shoved the man aside.

Dixon followed closely as the Major threw open the flap, and as soon as he saw what was going on in the stinking, steaming interior of the tent he whirled around ready to beat the hell out of the KLF man on general principles, but the ragged soldier had fled.

“Get off her,” said Peel, and Dixon whipped his head back around at the flat, lethal tone in his companion’s voice. The Congolese heard it too, and even though the man didn’t speak English, he hurriedly rolled off to the side and started pulling his pants back up.

Dixon moved quickly to the woman bound atop the barrels while Peel grimly, steadily advanced on the man struggling to his feet and trying to find his gun.

“No,” said Peel, almost conversationally, and shot both hands out. The KLF soldier took the blow to his chest, whooped as his wind fired out of him, and fell back to the ground, his pants still halfway up his thighs. His erection, just seconds ago busily engaged in rape, wilted quickly.

“God dammit, Peel,” said Dixon, whipping out his pocketknife and working on the ropes binding the woman to the iron barrels. “These men are supposed to be our allies?”

The black man roared and surged forward from the ground, aiming at Peel’s knees for the takedown. The Australian nimbly stepped to the side and shot out one steel-toed foot, catching the Congolese on the side of his head as he lunged and knocking him back to the dirt, where he stopped yelling and started moaning. Dixon shot a quick look over at the man and shook his head.

“How is she?” asked Peel.

“She’s alive,” said Dixon, finishing his first cuts, lifting the woman’s wrist and feeling for a pulse. “Beyond that, she’s having a bad fucking day.”

“Who is the woman?” Peel asked the floundering man on the ground. “Where did you bastards get her?”

The man said something in Lingala, raised his head at Peel and spat. The glob of blood and saliva splatted against the Major’s thigh, and he looked down at the sputum for a long second. Slowly, he shook his head in regret and reached down for his Glock.

“You going to kill him?” asked Dixon, working on the woman’s gag, smoothing the stringy, sweaty hair from her face as he did.

“No, but he doesn’t know that.” Peel was angry, aiming the pistol straight at the Congolese man. The soldier’s eyes went wide with panic and terror, and he scooted back toward the tent wall when he got tangled up in his trousers again and crashed back down onto the side of his head.

“If you change your mind,” said Dixon, “just try not to get the bastard’s brains all over you when you shoot.”

“What is going on?” roared the voice of Kazumu.

Peel and Dixon both paused, gun and knife in hand, and looked expressionlessly toward the tent flap. The KLF Captain stood there with one of his men, and on his face was an admixture of anger and fear, as though he wanted to attack and apologize at the same time. Peel turned away from the rapist who scuttled towards the front of the tent.

“You didn’t know about this, right?” the Australian asked, gun held loosely in his hand. “You wouldn’t countenance the capture and rape of a woman by your army, would you?”

“I—”

“Because,” said Peel, still taking measured steps forward until he stood right before the Congolese Captain. “Because such things are so abhorrent, so contrary to every rule of law in the world, that if I thought you had a hand in this kind of depravity, I’d make sure you received the harshest form of justice available. So tell me, Captain Kazumu, is this happening with your permission?”

Dixon finished cutting the bonds from the woman and looked around for something to cover her with. She had struggled briefly as he slashed the ropes from her ankles, and he took that as a good sign, a sign that she wasn’t catatonic or comatose after the abuse she’d gone through. He found a jacket crumpled on the floor nearby and picked it up. He laid it atop her and tucked it under her back, her ripped, bleeding buttocks, and put his arms beneath her, lifted her into the air.

He’d carried Jessica like this just last week, his lover giggling in anticipation and joy as they’d romped on the beach at Hilton Head. Now he felt the grease and dirt and, probably, blood and semen, and what had recently seemed a tender gesture turned into a raw rage.

“Of course the fucker knew about this,” said Dixon, his voice rasping as he walked forward with the unconscious woman. “It’s his camp, his men, his fucking tent.”

“Hullo!” shouted Figgs from outside, and in the next second the Englishman appeared between the dark forms of Kazumu and his soldier. “What kind of balls-up is all this, then?”

“I’ll need an answer, Captain,” said Peel calmly, the Glock still held loosely in his hand.

Kazumu looked at the men facing him, looked down at the soldier on the ground who had finally got his pants on and was fumbling for his sidearm.

Figgs took in the scene and shook his head. “You stupid, naughty bastards. Kazumu, your boy there is going to do something incredibly dumb in a second.”

Kazumu roared a command, and the soldier next to him raised his machine gun and fired a burst of lead into the newly clothed form of his compatriot, sending the man dancing, the gun flying from his hand to thwack against the canvas wall of the tent, and blood to spurt out from a dozen wounds as he performed a danse macabre.

Peel and Dixon didn’t flinch as they destroyed the man, and they both walked forward as though their moves had been choreographed. Kazumu stepped aside to let them progress out of the tent unmolested. Figgs stepped aside as well, but there was a sardonic half-grin on his face, which Dixon did his best to ignore.

They would play it this way for a while. Kazumu would lead them to Ackerman, and they would pretend that the man did not know of the woman his army had kept tied up in a filthy, bloody tent to slake their bestial desires. Dixon understood the realities of life, understood that sometimes you had to lie down with monsters, but this was too close, too personal. He would do his job and save the fucking world again, but there would be a settling of debts before this business was all over.

Guaranteed.

——

Haverkamp didn’t want to make the call, but he knew if he didn’t the consequences would be worse for him later. He waited until Plenary had departed the CIA building, and then he used his secure line in his office and asked to be patched through to the Pentagon.

“Yes?”

The voice on the other end was cold, like the breath of an ice sculpture come to life. Haverkamp shuddered, wondered why a man like him who had faced down Al-Qaeda terrorists and Russian FSB agents felt scared of a Pentagon General. But then, Haverkamp didn’t know of anyone who Byrd Coaldale didn’t terrify at some level.

“You asked me to call you, sir, if anything emerged from the Ackerman affair.”

In the silence that followed, Haverkamp swallowed audibly, waiting for a response.

“Give me the details?” demanded Coaldale.

Haverkamp relayed the mission details as best he knew them. That a team of special forces led by Jack Dixon, James Figgs and Harrison Peel were already inserted into the Congolese jungles. Their mission was to take out Major Ackerman and the URP.

“Harrison Peel, you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Formerly of the Australian Army Intelligence Corps?”

“You know him?”

“We’ve met,” said the Pentagon official, “but he didn’t realize who I was when we did.”

There was another long moment of uncomfortable silence.

“What do you want me to do, sir?”

“Nothing. Let it play out.”

“Very well, sir.”

“Haverkamp?”

“Yes, sir?”

“You did the right thing, bringing this to my attention.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the phone line fell silent, Haverkamp felt like he would see another sunrise again.

——

“So who’s the bird?” asked Figgs, leaning back and sipping more of his whiskey. Peel couldn’t imagine where the man had secreted the liquor on the helicopter ride into the depth of hell, but he hadn’t run out yet.

“She’s not conscious,” said Peel, looking around the darkened clearing. Jungle noises were soft but pervasive, providing a hum of background static to their conversation. Several of the KLF soldiers were mingling around a campfire some five meters away, roaring with laughter and passing a jug around, and there were supposedly more KLF men posted in defensive positions around the bai, but the foreigners had taken no chances. Half the SEALS were out there, too, and both of Figgs’ SAS men, all grouped in teams of three. “Dixon’s taking care of her.”

“He sweet for her?” asked the Englishman, raising his hand to his mouth and stifling a small belch. “You could tell, even under all that dirt and soot, that she was quite a looker.”

“He’s got a girlfriend, you sick bastard,” said Peel without heat, standing up and stretching. “And I suppose you knew nothing about all this?”

“Innocent as a babe, my antipodean friend,” protested Figgs, eyes widening. “I may be a lot of things — probably am — but I wouldn’t approve of constant gang rape.”

“Or any rape?”

Peel thought about pushing the Brit further, finding out exactly what the MI6 man knew about the KLF, but realized that he wouldn’t learn anything more than what Figgs wanted to tell him. “You think these idiots can guide us to Ackerman, then?” he asked instead.

Figgs laughed. “They’ll do better than we could on our own, Peel.”

“Will it be enough?”

Figgs stopped laughing and looked up at the shaven-headed Australian. “Getting us close will be enough.”

Peel thought about it for a second and realized the man was right. Even if they didn’t succeed in their ostensible mission to rescue the wounded Major Ackerman, they would get close enough for the URP to find them. And after that, it would be a simple matter of sending out the correct signal on the satellite radio, and one more blasphemous cult dedicated to the destruction of the universe would die in a conflagration of plasmic flame.

And if they had to sacrifice themselves, Peel and Dixon and Figgs, well, that was what they’d signed up for.

——

“What’s your name?” asked Dixon gently. It was the fifth time he’d asked, and like the previous four times, he didn’t expect an answer. This time, however, the woman surprised him.

“Tania,” she whispered, eyes still closed, still clutching the thin woolen blankets tightly around herself.

He’d laid her in the bunk tenderly and carefully a couple of hours ago, and since then he’d been sitting next to her, talking in soothing tones, gently brushing her hair and swabbing most of the dirt and grime from her with wet rags. He’d cleaned and bandaged her more obvious wounds, though he was afraid that there may be something wrong with her inside. Dixon knew they couldn’t deal with interior bleeding with the limited medicines they had available in their med kits.

“Hello, Tania,” he whispered. “I’m Jack.”

She was silent, her eyes still closed, but Jack felt a tension break in the woman. She’d been tight and wound-up, even in her unconsciousness, but slowly she relaxed and settled into the bunk. “Where…?” she began, blinking open her eyes.

“Same place, I’m afraid,” he said, shaking his head. “But you’re away from the soldiers now. Safer.”

“Safe?” She said the word as though she didn’t understand it.

Dixon laughed a bitter laugh. “No. Not safe. But you’re better off than you were this morning.”

——

“She’s a journalist,” Dixon said, taking a long drink of water, doing the best he could to scan the darkened jungle, using only the light from the brilliant stars and the smoldering fires that the KLF had let burn out. “An Australian journalist.”

“Australian?” asked Peel. “What the bloody hell is she doing here?”

“She works for something called the ABC.”

“Australian Broadcasting Corporation,” said Peel.

“And she’s based out of Nairobi, covering the mess in the Congo,” said Dixon. “She got a tip about some cannibal band of rebels and followed it up. Bad decision.”

“She came out here by herself?” asked Figgs. “The woman’s got a pair of balls!”

“She had a cameraman and a guide,” said Dixon, closing the cap on the canteen and setting it down next to him. “Their assailants captured the two men, but she hid in the chaos and slipped away.”

“Lucky her,” said Peel.

“Yeah,” said Dixon. “I’m sure she’s counting her blessings right now.”

“Who captured her partners?” asked Figgs, leaning close. “Was it the URP?”

“I’m sure it was,” said Dixon. “She had a hard time getting out descriptions. She’s exhausted, terrified, and there are going to be some severe emotional problems with her. But she mentioned bloody, mutilated men with missing fingers and toes, bleeding wounds all over them. Wounds they seemed proud of, and teeth filed down into fangs. She mentioned one other thing, too.”

“Yes?” asked Figgs, his face avid with interest.

“Their leader was a white man,” said Dixon.

Peel leaned back and nodded, closing his eyes. “Would she recognize him if she saw him again?” he asked. “We can get a picture of Ackerman, see if she recognizes it.”

“No,” said Dixon. “According to her, the man wore a mask. Always wore a mask.”

——

Plenary drove directly from Langley to Fort Meade, his mind whirling with the data he’d assimilated in his visit to CIA headquarters. It was a good thing there wasn’t much traffic this time of night, because he was driving on autopilot.

What was the mask?

It all boiled down to that question. Haverkamp had instantly assumed that the mission was a trap of some sort. That the URP had turned Ackerman and Fargo somehow, and that Dixon and Peel were there in the Congo to trigger some catastrophe. Reluctantly, Plenary had agreed with his counterpart. It was just too simplistic, this set-up, too convenient. The prodigal soldier stumbling out of the jungle, the wounded hero, waiting for rescue, and the international rescue team bravely plunging into the wilderness to save the day.

It was bullshit, was what it was. The URP wanted — needed — something from Peel and Dixon and Figgs. But what?

And how had they turned Ackerman?

In the last few years Plenary had learned a fair bit about the occult from the global Code-89 Intelpedia, researched the gods and monsters who lurked just beyond the threshold of sanity, waiting for a passageway into the world, and his mind kept circling back on the picture he’d seen of the dead URP commander, his flesh eaten from his face.

What had he worn on his face that made him invulnerable to a hundred high-velocity slugs?

And where had the mask gone once he had finally died?

When his cell phone rang, he answered it immediately.

“Sir,” his senior night officer spoke. “Bad news, sir.”

Plenary huffed. No one ever called him in the middle of the night with good news. “What is it?”

“Fargo, sir, he just murdered a doctor, two nurses and two SAS soldiers.”

Plenary grimaced. Things were just getting better and better.

“Where is he now?”

“No one knows.”

“Get me on the next flight to Nairobi, fastest flight you can.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that book too, the one Peel led us to.”

“The Masked Messenger?”

“Yes, that one.”

He signaled a turn, away from NSA headquarters and onto a beeline route straight to Joint Base Langley-Eustis for the next Air Force flight out of the country. His Langley team was working on the problem right now, and if there was anything to find they would find it, but they didn’t need his physical presence to do their job. He was better off on the field in Africa.

What had the mask looked like, he wondered…?

——

The KLF were back to their loud ways. Dixon knew that the skin magazines would be worthless as a bribe this time. The soldiers had already received their booty and had carefully hidden the Penthouses where Kazumu wouldn’t find and confiscate them.

None of the Congolese marched near him, however. He, Tania Selby, Figgs and one of the SAS men walked alone, and the KLF were very careful not to look at the white woman. Dixon may not have been a soldier, but he had killed before, and the look in his eyes was enough to make the KLF keep their distance and pretend they’d never seen the reporter in their whole miserable lives.

“What can you tell me about the white man, Tania?” asked Dixon.

“I told you everything I saw already,” said the woman. She stumbled in her borrowed boots and carefully looked straight ahead. Dixon remained amazed by her resilience. Tania’s abusers marched all around her, but she didn’t cower or cringe and she’d managed to force her wits back into her skull and keep everything under wraps while she was enduring this fearful situation. True, she never let herself get more than a foot away from Dixon, but he knew that was normal. She’d latched onto him as a kind of savior, an island of sanity and stability in this madhouse country, and while he knew and had been careful to tell her they were walking into even more mortal danger, her attention flattered him.

She reminded him of Jessica. Both were intelligent, curious and brave, both beautiful. He suspected that if Jessica had gone through the torture that Tania had, she’d react in similar ways.

He hoped they weren’t all going to die out here.

“What about the mask, then?” asked Figgs. He moved easily through the jungle, casually twitching his machete now and again to slash fronds and branches from their path, and even the insects left him alone as though they recognized him as a fellow denizen of the green hell. “What did it look like?”

Tania shuddered and shook her head. “It was—”

“And where the hell has Peel gone to again?” interrupted the Englishman. “He should hear all of this.”

“He took Dunthorpe to check our back trail,” said Dixon. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

Suddenly, shouts rose from the men at the vanguard of the traveling party. Shouts of startled surprise. Dixon instantly raised his gun and moved an inch closer to the woman in a protective gesture. Figgs raised his eyebrow at the SAS soldier, and the man nodded and broke into a jog going forward.

Seconds later, amid the chattering of Kiswahili and Lingala, the British Special Forces man called out, “You’d better get up here, sir!”

“What fresh hell is it, then?” muttered Figgs, but he moved forward quickly, paced by Tania and Dixon. They moved through the milling knot of Congolese soldiers, and within seconds stood in front of the mob, startled into silence by the tableau before them.

“Marcus! Ambrose!” shouted Tania Selby. She lurched forward toward the two men, both of whom kneeled on the jungle floor facing her. Dixon instinctively reached out and snagged her arm, pulled her back, and she yelped and cringed at the sudden contact, panic rising in her eyes like flames.

Dixon cursed himself. He’d given the woman fresh sign that men would do whatever they wanted to do to her, ignoring her own wishes… But he didn’t have time for kinder, civilized feelings right now.

“My team!” she urged, straining against Dixon’s hand. “They’re all right!”

“No, they’re not,” said Figgs quietly. “Look at them.”

The two men, one white with shaggy dark hair, the other dark ebony with a shaved scalp, both wore ragged, filthy Western clothes, both seemed relatively unharmed by their ordeal in the jungle. But both men kneeled stock-still in the dirt and loam of the jungle floor with identical expressions of terror on their faces.

“I may be defining ‘all right’ incorrectly,” said Figgs, “but I’m pretty sure that those chaps ain’t it.”

“Help them!” demanded the journalist. “Someone help them!”

Slowly, the SAS man moved forward, his eyes constantly scanning the surrounding jungle. “Judas goats,” he said, scowling. “It’s a trap.”

“Yes,” said Dixon. “And we have to trigger it.”

“We could turn around and walk away,” suggested Figgs.

“The URP is here,” said Dixon, forcing himself not to whirl in panicked circles looking for the deformed army that was sure to be there. “It’s what we came for.”

“Just checking your guts, Yank,” said Figgs, his voice also calm. “Go ahead, Garvin. Help the blokes.”

Corporal Garvin moved forward until he stood right before the kneeling men, and both of them shuddered slightly in still paroxysms of terror and panic, their eyes rolling desperately up toward the British soldier. Hesitantly, the SAS man reached out with his non-gun hand and took the white cameraman by the shoulder.

‘Collapsed’ is perhaps too inadequate a verb to describe what happened next to the kneeling man. As soon as Garvin contacted the rough shirt of Marcus, the man lost cohesion, his flesh melting into his blood, his bones liquefying instantly, and his body became a foul slurry of oozing protoplasm. Screams rose from the Congolese soldiers and Dixon felt them turning and running from the unholy sight, and even stoic Garvin leaped back and shook his head violently as though whatever sorcery had turned the solid form of the cameraman into a crumbling heap of bloody goop was catching. Within a second, nothing remained of the man but a spreading puddle of red-and-gray liquid already soaking into the jungle floor, and an unbearably foul stench rose from the site as though a charnel house had swung open its doors.

Dixon grabbed Tania and swung her around so she was between him and the other kneeling man, ignoring her air-raid screams. The team’s attention was meant to focus on the horrors before them, which meant that the action would happen behind them!

Gunfire chattered from the rich green walls of the jungle, loud and staccato and drowning out even the sounds of the KLF’s yells. Dixon saw three of the Congolese soldiers jerk and twist like marionettes by the force of the unseen barrage, blood spurting from them in crimson squibs, and he saw the other KLF men diving to the ground in panic, dropping their weapons and screaming for mercy.

From the corner of his vision, Dixon’s mind acknowledged that Ambrose also flowed away as a putrid puddle of flesh and liquid bones.

Dixon raised his M16 and waited for a clear shot, and in his peripheral vision saw Figgs doing the same thing. No bullets came their way, which was strange, but Dixon didn’t waste time wondering why. Instead, he focused on a muzzle flash from the sheltering dark of the jungle and loosed a burst at it.

Something yelped and fell out of the trees. Dixon caught sight of a horribly twisted, fearsomely mutilated black body, fresh bullet wounds mixing with a hundred older scars. He saw that he’d killed the man and turned to find another target.

Figgs had let loose a long, sustained barrage of bullets from his own gun, and the lead churned up the foliage to their left and brought a fresh volley of screams from some hidden assailant. Now Garvin joined them and contributed his own loud, chattering blasts to the general assault.

“This would be tougher if they were firing back!” yelled Figgs almost cheerfully in the midst of the smoke and screams.

Dixon ignored him and watched as the URP men came out of the trees and concentrating on finishing the howling, prone KLF soldiers, mercilessly firing blast after blast into the helpless men. He saw one soldier — the one who had shot Tania’s rapist last night — have his head explode like a rotten melon by a withering cannonade, by a razor-toothed leering scarecrow of a man with ripped gaping holes in his biceps. Dixon aimed at him, but then another man came striding out of the jungle, long spear in one hand, wickedly gleaming knife in the other. A tall, muscled white man wearing a mask.

“Target,” said Figgs conversationally, and fired. So did Dixon and Garvin, letting loose with everything they had.

It was impossible to see what happened as the hundreds of rounds hit the leader of the URP, because the smoke and haze were so dense and concealing that they could only catch glimpses through the occasional clear spot, but the man rocked back and forth with the impacts.

“He’s not going down,” gasped Garvin, panic taking over his voice. “He’s not bloody going down!”

“Keep firing,” commanded Figgs.

But it was useless. Slowly, incredibly, the figure fought its way through the blistering maelstrom of metal, brandishing the spear like Moses’ staff, and the other URP soldiers respectfully melted back out of their commander’s way and watched with a shark’s gleaming grins as he strode forward laughing, his howls of glee louder even than the crescendo of gunfire.

As he neared, Dixon saw not blood but some viscous black ooze spurting from the myriad bullet wounds riddling the figure, a bubbling tar which quickly and wondrously sealed off the holes, healing them as fast as they formed. The man — Ackerman, it had to be Ackerman — roared with laughter at the pain he must have endured, but kept striding forward toward them, that black tar roiling on the multitudinous wounds in his torso, his legs, his arms, his head.

The head half-covered by that mask.

Bullets whanged off the impenetrable wood of the thing, leaving smoking divots in the alien’s body of teak, only to repair and refill instantly. One ebony eye glittered in the center of the half-mask, an eye which gleamed insanely at Dixon and Figgs and Garvin, and long sword-sharp teeth hooked down from it and dug into Ackerman’s cheeks, reached around and plunged into his wounded head. Dixon felt his fingers grow numb on the trigger of the assault rifle, heard the cessation of sound from beside him as Figgs snarled and ran out of ammunition, and then Ackerman and the mask were before them.

The spear whipped around and bit deep into Garvin’s gut. The British soldier made a gargled scream and collapsed as his intestines spilled out of the gaping stomach wound.

Tania screamed again, and Dixon wanted to, but then he found the blade of Ackerman’s knife suddenly up under his chin, forcing his head up to avoid having the steel plunge into his palate. Figgs dove at Ackerman, but the ex-Special Forces Major contemptuously swept the attack aside with the butt of his spear, and Figgs careened into the dirt.

“Welcome, friend,” whispered the man in the mask.

Dixon smelled his taint, the stench of a hundred half-healed wounds, rank with infection, and stared into that black, black eye set into the hard, disconcerting wood.

“I’m so glad you could come.”

——

The rain came in heavy sheets, washing away the blood. The mutilated soldiers stripped the prisoners of all possessions except their uniforms and boots. Around their wrists they bound wire, then forced them to kneel before the corpses of their compatriots. Corporal Garvin’s eyes seemed full of life as they stared back at Dixon, but the multitude of organs spilled from guts told another story. Beyond him, two puddles of liquid flesh were all that remained of Tania’s former companions.

More of the URP soldiers dragged the corpses of those soldiers who had not made it into the center pile. Of the KLF, only Kazumu was spared. Figgs, Tania, two of the SEALs — Lieutenant Thompson and a young man from Kentucky, Corporal Vetch — and himself had lived through the ambush. Despite all his arduous training as a SEAL, tears now filled Vetch’s eyes. Tania, in comparison, was disturbingly still and silent.

“Is this all of them?” boomed Ackerman as the pincer-like tentacles wrapped about his head beat unnatural rhythms against the wooden mask. Wounds on his human flesh continued to pop open, expelling unwanted rounds coated in thick black tar. Rain mixed with his blackness, burned as if it had just touched acid.

“Yes, sir!” responded Ackerman’s second-in-command, a huge black man with a three-pronged bony spiral etched into his chest, and instead of a face, torn strips of skin and meat so that when seen from head on, he wore the red mask of a human skull.

“Two are missing,” Ackerman said after an examination of the dead. “The other SAS soldier and the Australian intelligence office, Major Peel. Find them.”

As three Spiraling Worm cultists darted into the jungle, Dixon did a double-take. Ackerman knew exactly who they were, right down to their names and ranks. Perhaps he knew their mission too.

“And their long-range radio?”

“Accounted for, sir.”

“Excellent.”

Ackerman’s heavy feet sloshed in the mud and rain as he walked the line of prisoners. Dixon dared not look up, for he had no desire to give this insane monster any reason to single any of them out, himself included. He wanted to comfort Tania, but she wouldn’t look at him. Rationally he knew this was for the best, but such thoughts didn’t lessen his discomfort. Someone had set them up, screwed them from the beginning. That much was obvious now, but not why? The most important question of all, that’s what Peel had said. The only consoling factor was that Peel and Dunthorpe were still free. But if rescue was their plan, there were the twenty-two URP soldiers and the alien Ackerman they would have to deal with first. Odds that not even gambling addicts would take.

Ackerman stopped before Dixon. A hand, fashioned seemingly from steel it was so strong, lifted the NSA officer’s head high. That single eye, black without pupils or anything analogous to earthly eyesight, darted this way and that, but always it looked at him. Dixon saw his fear reflected in that single eye.

“This one,” Ackerman yelled to his men, his mouth visible beneath the wooden row of randomly jutting teeth. “This one is their leader. He is important to me, so he dies last.”

The hand pushed Dixon hard, smacking him into the mud. When Dixon tried to stand, a foot came down upon him, heavily.

“Did I say get up?”

“No,” Dixon fumbled his words as mud splashed into his mouth. He was both terrified and consumed with rage, and knew which of the two emotions he would have to nurture if he was to escape. Then he thought of Tania. Strange that he considered her while this creature pushed him down, degrading him. He had to protect her, he’d promised her, given his word that he would. With purpose now, at last rage took control. Anger, he realized, would see him through.

Ackerman stepped off him. Dixon remained prone, where he watched his nemesis single out the next prisoner.

“This one,” Ackerman pointed to Kazumu. “He is not one of them, he is not important.” He whistled a command, motioned that he wished to separate the Congolese soldier from the line.

Kazumu screamed as two mutilated men dragged him forward. They wrapped a rope about his bound hands and then slung the other end over a low-hanging branch. Quickly, the mutilated men hoisted Kazumu into the air until his feet kicked madly a foot above the wet earth.

Dixon could not believe the power of Kazumu’s screams, could not find words to describe the chill that fed upon his soul when he heard the other man’s cries growing louder and louder with each passing second. Then the creature that was Ackerman was upon the KLF leader, savage and wild. From Dixon’s angle, in the mud, and through the thick rain, it was hard to ascertain details, which was a blessing. All he saw was blood, then flesh in Ackerman’s mouth.

The feast continued for minutes, but it felt like hours. When Ackerman stepped away, his alien teeth had stripped Kazumu not only of his clothes, but of his skin and flesh. Half a man now. Shreds of skin, muscle and even bone hung like wild thorns and fleshy leaves, as if he were a peeled orange.

The men were next to turn on Kazumu. More fastidious, they cut what remained of him apart with machetes and fighting knives, but they still ate their meat raw.

When Dixon thought he could take it no more, when he believed no sight would ever terrify him so deeply, he caught Kazumu’s eyes.

With the single eyelid left to him, Kazumu blinked.

Finally, Dixon vomited the ache that had been in his stomach for so long.

——

Peel could only close his eyes at the horror. It was all he could do. And it was all he could do not to shoot the man, put him out of his misery. Dunthorpe, with his FN-FAL rifle, was ready for the mercy shot. He wanted to take it. So did Peel. But if they did, they’d betray their position and the two dozen soldiers would be upon them in seconds. Odds they could not survive.

Peel clenched his fists against his frustration. Kazumu might have been a horrible human being, but he was still a human who loved, aspired, hurt and hoped.

Afterwards, as they slinked back deeper into the jungle where the foliage would cover them and mask their voices as well, Peel could see that Dunthorpe was shaking.

The Australian put a hand on his shoulder. “It was the right thing to do.”

Dunthorpe nodded. “I know sir, it’s just…”

The Australian gave the SAS soldier a moment. He knew he needed one himself.

“It’s just that mask. I mean, you saw it, sir, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

Suddenly Peel knew Dunthorpe was staring straight at him, his eyes wide with disbelief. “You thought it was what happened to Kazumu that upset me?”

Now it was Peel’s turn to stare. “It upset me!”

“No disrespect, sir, but I’ve seen horrible stuff like that before, more often than you may care to know. But that mask, it was… alien. And you acted like you expected it!”

Peel took a moment. He had to ensure he answered well, because now more than ever, they needed each other, to salvage this mess. “Look, Sergeant, you’re right, I expected something like this. But consider this; you said you’ve seen horrible things like what happened to Kazumu in your past. Well, I’ve seen things like Ackerman, not exactly that, but creatures like it, many times in my past.”

“You should have told me, told the boys!” His tone became aggressive, angry.

“And you would have believed me?” Peel snapped. “Think about it, Sergeant. I remember when I first encountered this—” He searched for a word and found none. “This shit, Sergeant, and I know nothing that anyone could have told me, that would have prepared me. Think about it! Think about what I’m saying. That’s why we’re here, Dixon and I, to stop this kind of thing, again and again, until these fuckers finally leave humanity in peace!”

Dunthorpe hung his head. Eventually he nodded. Then he looked up, caught Peel’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Major, it’s just—”

“It’s just that you didn’t expect it, right?”

He nodded.

“Well, let me tell you, I’m glad I’ve got you with me right now, because you know why?”

“Why, sir?”

“Three crazy URP cultists are high-tailing it back into the jungle, trying to find us. We take them out, that’s three less the others have to worry about. Guerilla tactics, Sergeant. You know how to fight like a guerilla, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir!” At last, conviction in his voice.

“Good, because we are going to take down these bastards, one sick prick at a time, until we’re ready to rescue the men we came here with, plus Tania!”

“Yes, sir! We bloody well are, sir.”

Quickly they hid their packs, which they would retrieve when they returned. Now they could run light and fast into the jungle, hell bent upon their prey.

——

Long before the rain stopped, they were force-marched deeper into the jungle. The wire tight around Dixon’s wrists cut until they bled. They hurt like hell, but he knew he must try to break them. Wire became brittle if twisted too many times, so that is what he did despite the pain they caused, twist his hands every step he took, ever further into the unknown canopy.

Tania walked ahead of him. Her head hung low. She refused to look at him. She refused to look at anyone. He wondered what thoughts raced through her head, what fears and terrors grew strong. What extra pain she must feel compared to the rest of them. Had he failed her, because he had saved her from one horror only to subject her to something far worse?

Of his other companions, Figgs looked tired and about ten years older. Vetch was pale. Mentally, he had already given up. Only Thompson remained stoic, head held high as he marched like the soldier he was. If the NSA officer had to rely on anyone in the remaining group, he knew it would have to be Thompson.

Tania stumbled, unable to keep her balance, and with bound hands fell headfirst into the mud. Dixon ran for her to help her stand. Before he could reach her, the stock of an AK-47 smashed into his gut, wielded by a cultist soldier with a slashed face. Dixon went down, felt the wind in his gut escape and the void it left behind fill with pain.

There was a cracking of branches and mud splashing. Dixon stumbled to his knees to see Thompson sprinting into the undergrowth. Bullets sprayed from a dozen assault rifles, yet every burst missed him. He was going to make it. Another one of them was going to be free!

Hope vanished when a spear materialized in Thompson’s back. A splatter pattern of blood hung in the air for a few seconds before it too spilled like rain. Dixon looked back to the cultists. It had been Ackerman who had thrown that spear, and his aim had been perfect.

Now excitement grew in the ranks. Chest-beating and lip-licking took hold of each man. They weren’t interested in their prisoners for the moment, so Dixon sidled up to Tania. “I promise you I’ll get you out of this. On my life, I will.”

Her eyes were horrible. “Will you?”

“It’s a promise, Tania.”

A blow to the back of his head sent him sprawling again. The skull-faced second-in-command was upon him, the stock of his barrel poised to smash his face into oblivion.

“Stop!” It was Ackerman. “We need that one alive.”

Dixon, saved for the moment, rolled on his side, hoping to ease the pain in his gut and head. Beyond, whooping, lyrical cries erupted from the soldiers. Men dragged Thompson, with the spear still wedged through his back and out through his gut, to Ackerman.

“He’s still alive,” Skull-Face explained, blood oozing from his facial wounds.

“Good!”

Ackerman only hesitated for a second, staring into the eyes of the SEAL commander. Thompson’s last act was to spit blood into the eye of his foe. Ackerman, in a snake-quick strike, bit into Thompson’s face, biting off the soldier’s tongue so he could not scream.

None of the prisoners could watch. Vetch finally broke, cried like a baby. Figgs rolled into himself, hoping for catatonia. Tania just stared into the jungle, numb to everything.

Are we going to survive this? Dixon asked himself. If this were not to be his end, he knew he had to keep trying, like Thompson had tried. So he searched for clues or aides, anything to tip the balance in his favor.

When Ackerman finished eating, the other soldiers turned upon the serrated corpse. Dixon studied his foe and saw that now Ackerman had completed his rites of cannibalism. He seemed somewhat more relaxed. “No more killings until tomorrow, when I really need them,” he said to Skull-Face. Realizing that he had just spoken in English, he switched to Lingala, and talked of other matters Dixon could not understand.

Again working at the wire binding his hands, Dixon saw now that the Spiraling Worm cultists had a ritual for their cannibalism. Their eating practices were the same here as when Ackerman had butchered Kazumu. Did they eat humans not because it pleased them, but because it was required of them?

Who ruled here, Ackerman or the Mask?

——

They ran hard and fast. The jungle seemed to bend inwards, a living festering organism ready to swallow them into the gut of some world-sized beast, yet while they had strength, they would not let it beat them. Dunthorpe led the way, Peel followed. The SAS man was an expert tracker, and he had youth and a rigorous training program on his side, youth and fitness that constantly threatened to leave Peel for dead. The Australian was fit; he undertook a rigorous exercise program every morning, but he was inadequate compared to Dunthorpe.

The cultist soldiers moved faster than either man expected, following the trail their party had left before the URP ambushed them. This made it easier for them to follow the cultists, for they were not expecting their prey to sneak up on them from the rear.

An hour from the ambush site, Dunthorpe was upon the first soldier before Peel even saw the cultist. The SAS man was incredible, his commando knife drawn and plunged into a kidney while the other hand covered the mouth to muffle any screams. When the body dropped dead, Dunthorpe cursed. “The bastard bit me!” Blood was already welling in the puncture marks in his hand.

A knife shot through air, narrowly missing Dunthorpe, lodging into a tree with a sudden thud! It was a multi-bladed dagger, weighed around its center of gravity and designed, Peel realized, to maximize the chance of a blade impact.

“Two o’clock!” Peel spotted the other cultists, fired his suppressed Glock 9mm in rapid succession, sending the first man down. Dunthorpe threw his knife, whizzing it through the air too fast to see, catching the last foe in the neck.

Peel ran to the cultist he’d shot, still flailing on the earth and lifting his assault rifle for one last burst at Peel. Acting impulsively, losing all control, Peel pulled his knife, straddled the man and stabbed him in the face and chest, repeatedly, splashing blood like water from a fountain. He was angry; he wanted revenge. Dunthorpe had to pull him away.

“It’s over, sir. They’re dead!”

Peel struggled momentarily until he remembered again who he was, and why he was here. For the first time in his life, he understood what momentary insanity felt like. “I’m sorry, Dunthorpe. I’ve let you down.”

“No, you haven’t, Sir. Besides, he deserved it.”

Peel struggled to his feet, wiped the blood on his hands on his already dirty uniform. He was panting hard. They both were. “It’s not that, it’s that I made it personal.”

“It is personal, sir.”

Spinning in a circle, Peel hoped to find his bearing, to remember what had just occurred. He was losing it, or had lost it, in this moment. He had to find himself again.

“Are you okay, Major? You seem a little intense.”

“Intense?”

“Yes, and not just now, but ever since Nairobi.”

Peel sat down before he fell down. He should have reprimanded the SAS soldier for his insolence, but his words were not malicious. His observations were right. “Do you remember how I told you I’ve seen this kind of thing before, in my past?”

Dunthorpe nodded.

“Well, it almost beat me once, and not that long ago. I thought I was dead, I thought it was killing me, and that I had no hope. And you know; what I hated most was that I gave up. Then, miraculously, I received a second chance at life, and I realized how pathetic I had become. So I vowed I’d never let it take me again. I’d never let these cosmic intrusions stop me ever again, not until I’d actually stopped breathing.”

“I understand, sir. I think I understand.”

Peel stood defiant, in control again. He passed the silenced Glock to Dunthorpe. “You’re going to need that.”

Dunthorpe smiled. “You’ve got a plan, haven’t you, sir?” He holstered the weapon to wipe the blood from his knife.

“Hell yes, I have. Knives and that pistol are the only silent weapons we have. Tonight, Ackerman and his followers will make camp. If we assume they’ll assign sentries, we can take a few of them out, one at a time, during the night.”

“Dwindle their numbers?”

“Exactly! Give Dixon, Figgs and the others every chance to escape on their own, or until the URP numbers drop so low, we can attempt a rescue.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“One more thing, though. Ackerman wanted our long-range radio. He was very clear about that. That’s got to be our priority, either getting it back, or making sure he can’t use it.”

“Do you know what he plans to do with it, sir?”

Peel smiled. His heavy breathing at last subsiding, “Not yet, but it can’t be good, whatever they plan. We better move now. We’ve got ground to make up.”

They sprinted again, knowing that night was not far away.

——

The cultists established camp in a small clearing hidden beneath the overhanging canopy. Several of the living, mutilated men hung Dixon, Figgs, Tania and Vetch from tree branches with ropes around their wrists. Vetch screamed for hours, not realizing that this was only to secure the prisoners for the night. To torment him further, several mutilated cultists tore off Vetch’s shirt and licked his salt with their serrated tongues. Eventually he passed out from shock.

During the night Dixon too passed out from exhaustion.

In the morning light, Figgs woke him with a kick of his foot. “You bastard, it’s all right for you!”

“For me?” Dixon scoffed. His hands were numb where the wire and rope bit. He couldn’t feel them at all. “You think they will not torture and eat me too?” He remembered somberly what Ackerman had said, about needing to feed the next day. It was the next day now.

“You heard what he said! He needs you, so you can negotiate?” Figgs was mad, on the verge of screaming.

“What?” Dixon yelled back. “You expect us to do what they say, in promise for our freedom? Figgs, you’re as mad as they are if you think they’ll let any of us go!”

“Oh, stop it!” Tania screamed at them both, “For god’s sake, fighting each other won’t help anything.”

“And, my dear lady, you think you’ve got a plan, do you?”

“Give it a rest, Figgs. She’s right!”

“What’s that?” Tania changed the subject, showing with her foot a shape in the foliage. Dixon scanned with his own eyes, saw the crumbled body of a sentry. “Peel,” he whispered, “and Dunthorpe!”

“So they didn’t abandon us?” Figgs questioned.

“They’re taking them down one by one!” For the first time in twenty-four hours, Dixon understood again what hope was.

Not long after, several URP soldiers discovered the dead body, and by their body language Dixon guessed this man was not the only one silently murdered in the night. The mutilated men wore their concern on their mutilated faces. One was mad enough to fire his AK-47 into the jungle, hoping to kill something.

Ackerman appeared next, like a lurking bat-human mutant, stumbling as if drunk. He was clutching his face as if the mask pained him. Black ooze dribbled from beneath the skin. His head was alive with wounds. It took every effort for Skull-Face to hold him upright, leading him like an invalid to Figgs. Wide-eyed with terror, the Englishman kicked, screamed and swore.

“Not that one!” Ackerman’s voice expressed pain. “He could be useful too.”

The next candidate was Tania, who too struggled against the approaching attacker, knowing that there was nothing she could do except sway ineffectively and allow whatever horrors came next.

“Not her!” Dixon screamed. “Hurt her, and I promise you, you’ll get no cooperation out of me. Ever!”

Ackerman turned as his body contorted with pain. “No?” He came close to Dixon, his single alien eye looked directly into his. “Perhaps you won’t. What about this one?” He pointed to the still unconscious Corporal Vetch.

“Kill him, and I won’t cooperate either.”

The human mouth seen beneath the mask, rotten and black, smiled with evil intentions. “I don’t believe you. You don’t care about him anywhere near as much as you do about her.”

Dixon flinched, closed his eyes against the pain of what he knew would come next. He didn’t want to have to choose; he wanted to save them all. But he had made a promise.

“Who will it be? The corporal or the girl? If you don’t answer, I eat her.”

Dixon mumbled.

“What did you say?”

“I said shove your fucking mask up your fucking ass, Ackerman.”

For a long moment Ackerman stood motionless, though the knife-tendrils still danced over his head and face, releasing more of the obscene black tar. Then the ex-soldier threw back his head and boomed a horrible laugh. “Noble,” he said finally. “I used to be like you, youngling. Believe me, though, nobility dies quickly in the jungle.”

And with those words he turned away from the dangling form of Tania and lunged at the unconscious Vetch. Dixon couldn’t watch. He’d seen enough horror these last twenty-four hours, enough for any lifetime. But because he’d seen the ‘eating’ before, he knew what was coming. As the minutes dragged, the NSA officer kept expecting to hear Vetch’s screams, but they never came. Perhaps his body had come so near to death during the night that he was oblivious to the final pain.

“Cut them down!”

It was Ackerman’s voice that spoke strongly, calmer now, that he had eaten.

Their ropes sliced, Dixon, Figgs, and Tania fell to the muddy earth. Dixon’s hands were still numb. As his blood flowed freely again, he felt sensation returning. Tania and Figgs thankfully seemed no worse than Dixon.

On the ground, Dixon looked again at Ackerman and the wooden monstrosity forever bound around his face. The former US soldier seemed calm now, back in control. Did the mask require a blood sacrifice every morning? Dixon wondered if Ackerman denied himself human food, would the mask instead turn upon him?

“Six?” Ackerman directed his question to Skull-Face. “Fuck!”

Dixon guessed this was the number of URP soldiers murdered during the night and smiled.

“You think it’s funny?” Ackerman stood over him.

Dixon, confident again, looked upon the horror, its wooden pincers wild and agitated, waiting for an answer. “Yep,” he answered.

“What if I threatened to kill you, all of you now, do you think Peel would surrender?”

Dixon shook his head. “He won’t do it. He’d lose everything if he did, by giving himself up.”

“I thought so.” He pulled Dixon to his feet. “Time to move, my friend. Don’t worry, it won’t be for much longer. Tonight, you’ll learn just exactly how we have betrayed you, just like your masters betrayed me all those years ago.”

The cultists pushed them forward, forced them to march together as they pressed ever onwards. Their captors chattered among themselves, more than they had yesterday. They worried about the two soldiers still hot on their trail, Peel and Dunthorpe.

Later, Tania moved close to Dixon and whispered in his ear.

“You still going to save me from all this?”

“Of course. I promised, didn’t I?”

“Good.” Even though Dixon could see her expressed terror, Tania betrayed the slightest hint of a smile, “because I believe you now.”

——

Plenary secured himself a priority military flight from Maryland direct to an American base in Germany, where he boarded another priority flight, one that had delayed its schedule eight hours just for him, that took him directly to Nairobi. It was a long and tiring flight, so when the NSA officer stepped into the US Embassy at 0800 hours, local time, he felt exhausted as all hell.

“Alice Tumbas,” the dark-skinned American woman assigned to him, shook his hand firmly.

“A name is okay, but who you are is more important.”

“I’m the head of the NSA’s East Africa operations. You said you wanted someone with African knowledge.”

“I did.”

“I’m the best there is, a second generation American with Ugandan parents. Strange how my mother and father fought so hard for a green card to escape their country, and here I am back in my ancestral homeland.”

Plenary snorted. “Nice. Have you been briefed?”

“Briefed?” she smiled confidently. “I’m about to brief you, sir!”

She led him into their operations room, and from a laptop keyed up satellite imagery of the northeastern Congo, beamed onto the wall by the digital projector. In the room were the half dozen officers and operators Plenary had requested for the assignment. They had been working round the clock with their counterparts in the United States, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

“As you already know, we lost contact with Dixon’s team thirty-two hours ago. That, combined with what we’ve learned about Fargo’s escape and massacre at the British hospital, makes us almost a hundred percent certain that Fargo’s allies have compromised the team, and this was some kind of set-up.”

“Set-up?” Plenary had nursed the same thoughts from the other side of the world. However, he would wait until he absorbed what Tumbas had to say before he expressed opinions of his own.

“Yes. Dixon should call in every six hours, but has failed to do so the last four times. We suspect that the URP captured his team, and that the rebels are taking the survivors somewhere specific that is important to their objectives.”

“How do you know this?”

“Our NSA satellites.” She zoomed the image closer until the point of view was only a few meters above the Earth. The scene was of a clearing in the jungle, of two soldiers, running and pointing westwards. Both men kept looking skywards, as if they expected satellites to see them. The time signature showed that they took the images only an hour ago. “That’s former Major Harrison Peel, the other is SAS Sergeant Ewan Dunthorpe. We believe they are following a contingent of URP soldiers. While the URP are obviously smart enough to know that by remaining under the canopy they remain hidden from our satellites, Peel and Dunthorpe have taken this opportunity to tell us where they are.”

“And the pointing shows us where they are headed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are we in contact with them?”

“Unfortunately, no, the only radio with a strong enough signal is likely in the possession of the URP.”

Plenary nodded. The situation was worse than he thought. He’d discovered several interesting passages in The Masked Messenger, information he needed to get to the team soon. If he was going to reach Peel and Dixon, he would have to do so with short-range radios, assuming they still had theirs. “What do you think they want, the URP?” he asked.

“Sir, honestly, none of the scenarios we or Maryland have pulled together make sense. We’re still investigating and compiling scenarios.”

Plenary had an idea, but he couldn’t share it with these people. If he told them all about gods and monsters, they would lock him up and throw away the keys. “I need to be airborne, Tumbas. I need to be in a chopper over Congo airspace, so that when we find them again, I can reach them.”

What he had to say, only Dixon or Peel would believe.

——

They’d come through miles of jungle at a forced march, and Dixon felt that he probably shouldn’t worry too much about whatever foul plans Ackerman had for that evening. At the rate they were moving, he’d be dead of exhaustion long before then. Finally, though, after many falls and blows from gunstocks, Ackerman signaled for a stop and the three prisoners stood panting, sweat and water rolling off them, as heedless of the insects that landed on them and fed from their wounds as they were to their surroundings.

Finally, Ackerman made a gesture toward their guards, and the mutilated men prodded Dixon, Figgs and Tania up toward the front of their little column, the prisoners stumbling with groans through the mud until they stood near the towering figure of the masked Major.

“Look ahead,” came the man’s voice, and Dixon dragged his head up and stared forward through the trees.

Twenty feet before them the jungle opened up, and Dixon caught glimpses of clear sky through the trees. He thought for a moment that there was another clearing, but quickly saw that it was a ravine they neared, a great gaping gash in the earth that, if they maintained their present course, they would have to traverse it.

“Oh, good,” said Figgs tiredly. “Now we get to climb down into the bloody Grand Canyon.”

“There’s a bridge,” said Ackerman distractedly, turning in a slow circle, scanning the surrounding vegetation. “A fallen tree across the abyss.”

Dixon thought about it for a second, then smiled.

It was a perfect place for an ambush.

And Peel and Dunthorpe were out there stalking them.

“If I only knew whether we got here first,” wondered Ackerman aloud.

His second-in-command spoke rapidly in Lingala, and Ackerman turned to him and said, “No!” in such a harsh voice that a startled Tania now trembled.

“If we send more men out to look for that bastard Australian, more men will die,” said the American. “Look at us. We’re down to twelve right now!”

“Unless Peel’s already on the other side,” said Dixon with as much cheer in his voice as he could muster. “He’s doing pretty well right now, I think.”

Ackerman wheeled and swung his spear at Dixon, and for one diamond-sharp moment the NSA man knew he was going to die. But it was the blunt end of the weapon that struck him in the gut, and though the pain in his midsection was intense and stabbing as he fell, he knew that he was still intact. He lay in the mud gasping, fighting to recover the breath that Ackerman had just stolen from him, and as he fought to look up, he saw Ackerman’s head and the chattering, writhing ebony mask not two feet from him as the Major bent over him.

“Just because I need you alive for a while longer,” the man whispered, “doesn’t mean that I can’t inflict serious damage to you.”

“Why do you need me?” gasped Dixon. “Some kind of sacrifice?”

“I’ve got plenty of men to sacrifice when the time comes,” said Ackerman, standing back up, hefting the spear and again gazing ahead at the ravine. “Plenty of men and one woman.”

“Bastard,” grunted Dixon.

“And if you don’t give me just a little cooperation, now,” said Ackerman, “I’ll see that every one of my men fucks the bitch in front of you before I kill her.”

“Ooh,” came a mocking voice, and Dixon whipped his head around to look at Tania Selby. She had stopped shaking and stood there defiantly, staring up at the monstrous mask. “Rape. How will I ever survive that?”

Ackerman looked back at her, and his mouth beneath the mask twisted into a snarl. He leaned forward, and Tania shrank back, her defiance already melting away. Dixon fought to his feet and stumbled over to her, but tripped and fell back into the mud as the bones in his chest shifted like broken crockery and his lungs screamed in protestation.

“You and I will go first, Ms. Selby,” said the monster. And he reached out and grabbed the woman by her hair, easily swung her around and started marching her through the barrier trees.

The other URP men barked commands, and Dixon found himself lifted to his feet and frog-marched forward. With every step he felt his insides screaming in pain, but he moved with only a few inadvertent grunts and considered that a minor victory.

And right now, he thought, even minor victories are worth counting.

A cultist shoved Figgs along beside him, and he heard the British agent cursing in a voice so spent and dead that Dixon wouldn’t have felt surprise if the MI6 man just simply dropped. But they both kept their feet and finally made it to the bridge.

It was a massive tree of some sort that Dixon had never seen before; he wasn’t a nature lover or a woodsman, and he’d grown up on the flat plains and cornfields of central Illinois and hadn’t seen a decent forest until he was a teenager on a camping trip downstate. This jungle shit was so far beyond his ken that he couldn’t even hazard a guess of what the dead thing might have once been.

Ackerman placed the deadly sharp head of his spear directly into the small of Tania’s back and said, “Move.”

“I’ll fall,” she said. “Without my hands free.”

“I suggest that you not fall,” said Ackerman in an icy voice. “You’re my shield, just in case the Major has beaten us across the bridge.”

“Maybe I’ll fall on purpose,” she said, raising her head. “Then what will you do when the bullets come flying out of the jungle?”

Ackerman laughed in a voice even colder than his speaking tone. “Bullets will not kill me. Haven’t you seen that?”

“They might knock your ugly ass down into the canyon, though,” Tania said. “Maybe you can find some worms or something to eat down there.”

“If you’re going to kill yourself, do it now,” said Ackerman, shoving the spearhead forward.

For a long second, Dixon thought she was actually going to do it. She tiptoed forward against the sharp pain in her back, and as they neared the tree, it appeared she might just dart forward and plunge into open air.

No, he thought. I promised you.

But she instead climbed awkwardly up onto the log and took a tentative step forward. Ackerman leaped up behind her and turned to address his lieutenant.

“You’ll be in the rear,” he said. “After I go, I want three soldiers behind me, then Dixon. Three more, then Figgs. Then the rest of you. Understand?”

The soldier nodded, his skull-face glistening redly. The man gripped his machine gun tightly and turned toward the jungle they’d come from, waiting for the inevitable ambush.

“Fucking Peel’s probably halfway back to Nairobi by now,” said Figgs.

“You think so?” asked Dixon. “That’s how you’d play it?”

“You still think you’re a hero, don’t you?” asked Figgs, shooting a tired look at his fellow prisoner. “You think you’re somehow going to pull a miracle out of your ass and save the wench, kill the bad guy, and we’re all going to go home and raise our glasses to another successful mission?”

“Peel’s out there,” said Dixon as they neared the tree. “He’ll do something.”

“And maybe Tarzan will come swinging through the trees and rescue us,” said Figgs, stopping as his guards crossed the barrels of their guns before him. “I reckon either possibility is as likely.”

And then Dixon fought his way up onto the wood. It was wet and slick, but the circumference of the dead tree was so wide that it was almost flat on top, and he had no real trouble taking careful steps along its length. Around him he heard the mocking calls of birds and monkeys, and jewel-bright insects darted from below, reflecting the first rays of sunlight he’d felt in what seemed like months.

The chasm below them was at least fifty feet deep, probably deeper, but it was hard to judge because it, too, was dense with vital, green foliage that disguised the bottom. Dixon felt a hot, wet breeze swirl around him from beneath as he advanced ten feet — twenty feet — across the bridge, and once his left heel slipped on a wet patch of moss and he pitched forward, knowing that he was going to fall off and plunge to his death.

But a muscular arm ragged with oozing wounds caught him, and as he hyperventilated and shook, a black face smiled toothlessly at him. Finally getting control of himself, he shook off the man’s support and took another step forward.

——

In the jungle, unseen, the troop of cultists and their prisoners were under observation.

“If I take Dixon out, they lose,” said Dunthorpe into the radio. Peel knew the man was ready with his gun aimed unswervingly at the form of the white man slowly, cautiously walking across the bridge.

Peel, not far away, thought about the man’s statement. For whatever reason, Ackerman wanted — needed — Dixon alive. And there he was, a perfect target on the tree bridge.

Ackerman and Tania had already gotten across the span, and Peel knew that time was running out if he and Dunthorpe wanted to do any damage here at the ambush spot. They could knock out another three or four of the URP, but perhaps they could deal more of a blow if they just shot and killed Jack Dixon. At the very least, Ackerman would have to abandon whatever plan he had for the American.

“No,” he whispered into the radio. “Fucking no. I won’t become that man.”

“Sir?” asked Dunthorpe, his voice crackling on their short-range radios, picking up god-knows-what kind of interference from the trees and mist and mud of the Congolese jungle.

“We’re the good guys, Dunthorpe,” said Peel. “But we’re running out of time. Start picking off those URP bastards and do it now!”

“Not Dixon?” asked the SAS man, trying one more time to end the whole business.

“Not Dixon, or Figgs, or Selby,” said Peel grimly. “I won’t become a monster to fight monsters.”

“Affirmative,” came the voice of the Englishman, and it was a voice doubtful yet resigned. “Get ready for some fireworks.”

——

“AUUGH!” came the whistling scream from beside Dixon, and he instinctively dropped to his knees, desperately wishing they had wired his hands in front of him rather than behind his back, so he could drop prone without getting a face full of wet wood.

And then as the blood spattered over him from the wounded soldier, he abandoned his scruples and dove into the tree, feeling the wood smack and dislocate his nose, gasping as blood gushed out.

The man’s scream had lasted only half a second, had ended with a gargled choke, but as the dead soldier fell atop him gushing his life’s fluids from the ragged, smoking hole in his neck, and Dixon heard the whole jungle grow instantly silent, in response to the gunshot and the death cry.

And then that silence was shattered by the yells of the remaining URP and the cacophony as they aimed their guns and started firing back into the jungle.

Dixon struggled to turn, to see what was going on, and tried with his abused muscles to heave the corpse of the soldier off his back, but only squirmed out a bit from beneath it, gagging at the sight of the man’s head hanging by only a few strands of gleaming meat and a dark stretch of skin. The sniper’s bullet had gone through the man’s neck and somehow began burning. Dixon smelled the powerful tang of cordite, the scorch of singed flesh, and shook his head to clear the man’s blood from his eyes.

“Figgs!” he screamed over the sound of gunfire, but the Englishman either couldn’t hear him or couldn’t answer, and Dixon prayed he hadn’t gone over the side into the ravine.

Dixon finally rolled the dead man off, feeling a fierce glee as he watched the mutilated corpse, smoke rising from the gunshot, teeter for one long instant on the edge of the log, then drop into the green misty canyon.

He got to his knees just as the pair of URP soldiers behind him came sprinting up. One of them raked the jungle with his submachine gun while the other, a hulking creature with shards of steel imbedded in his biceps and forearms like a demon’s zipper, grabbed the American and swung him around like a shield.

And the one holding the gun howled as bullets ripped through his legs and fine pink sprays of blood puffed out almost lazily into the damp air, howled and spun around, and for a second Dixon stared into the man’s insane eyes.

And then another spray of blood from the soldier’s face as the slug ripped through the back of his skull and came out directly under his left eye.

“Peel!” Dixon screamed delightedly. “You magnificent bastard!”

And then he was being dragged along the bridge by a strong arm around his neck, trying as best he could to dig his heels in to slow his captor’s progress, hoping against hope that the man would slip and drop him, expose himself to the snipers behind. But he was weak and the URP man was strong and frightened, and they dashed towards cover.

Breathing through his mouth, his nose still pouring blood, Dixon saw Figgs being hustled along by the last few URP soldiers. One man shoved the MI6 agent forward while the others laid down a suppressing fire, blasting the jungle indiscriminately.

——

“Sweet feathery Jesus,” whispered Dunthorpe, hurriedly sliding down the bole of the tree from which he’d shot the URP man. He’d hoped to pick off more than just the one, but the monstrous, deformed men had almost instantly deduced his position and began firing, revealing their expert training. He dropped to the ground and scampered to his next nest, ducking as the leaves and branches above him danced and shuddered as the whining bullets blistered them.

Dunthorpe slid down the slight hill and quick-crawled forward through the trees toward the crevasse. Bullets raged above him. He knew people aimed high when aiming uphill and hoped his luck would hold.

He achieved his last position. “Peel?” he whispered into his radio.

“Nice shooting,” came the voice.

“You ready for your turn?”

“I’ve got line-of-sight,” responded Peel. “If you can kill any more, do it. If not, I’ll take a bunch of them out when you’re done.” And then, suddenly, the squawk of static and a loud squeal from the radio. Dunthorpe winced and held the machine away from his ear, praying that the URP hadn’t heard the feedback and zeroed in on him.

When no bullets closed on his position, he toggled the ‘send’ switch. “Peel? Peel, do you copy?”

No response.

“Peel, god dammit! Are you there?”

Silence, except for the bullets still spraying from the log bridge ahead.

Shit.

He considered his problem. The URP might have discovered Peel. They might have killed him. If so, their booby trap wouldn’t trigger, and the URP would be sure to wreck the bridge when they finally crossed, leaving Dunthorpe here on the wrong side of the chasm, unable to continue to help the prisoners.

Shit, shit, shit.

His safest, best move was probably to sit tight. He wouldn’t be able to do anyone any good if he was dead. Perhaps he could wait until the soldiers disappeared, then go back for more help…

“Right,” he said to himself with a dour smile. And then after he’d arrived with the cavalry and found the dead bodies of all his companions, he could go to sleep every night for the rest of his life knowing he’d crapped out when the going got tight.

He thought about Peel, thought about the Major’s words to him. The rage the Australian felt at the cosmic insanities that supposedly kept trying to break into the world, things like the alien mask… things much worse.

“Into the valley of death,” he whispered.

He smiled.

Stood.

——

Ackerman raged at the end of the bridge and shook his spear like Satan. He dragged Dixon and finally reached the end of the log and heaved the broken man down next to Tania. Dixon sputtered as he landed, struggled to get up, and then the hideous soldier guarding them shoved him down again.

Figgs was coming up fast, propelled by his troika of guards, and in a matter of ten or fifteen more seconds they would all be across. Ackerman was shouting rhythmically now, shaking his spear like a talisman, and the whipping tendrils of the mask’s claws spun around as though they danced to his screaming beat. It sounded like…

Like…?

“He’s casting some kind of spell,” grunted Dixon. “We have to stop him.”

“Spell?” asked Tania. “You mean like real magic?”

“Like the one he cast on your cameraman,” said the American bleakly. “But worse, I’m sure. Peel and Dunthorpe are still back there, and Ackerman’s probably going to blow up the bridge or something.”

“Quiet!” screamed the URP soldier, whipping down the barrel of his gun to stick it into Dixon’s face.

“Shoot me,” said Dixon with a snarl. “Fucking go right ahead, you crazy bastard.”

“Oh my god,” breathed Tania, and Dixon spun around as best he could.

There, at the far end of the log bridge, a figure had appeared. A man, gun in hand, was firing as he ran, as he leaped from cover onto the tree and started chasing down the convoy of URP.

“Is that…?” asked Tania.

Dixon caught the glimpse of sunlight off a bald head and felt his heart drop into his stomach. “It’s Peel,” he whispered.

Ackerman stopped his chanting for a surprised moment, then roared in triumph. He whipped his arms up even as the rest of the soldiers concentrated their fire on the solitary figure rushing toward them. Cultists dragged Dixon and Tania back, out of the line of fire by their captors. I’m valuable, thought Dixon disgustedly, sick with frustration and rage that he wouldn’t even be able to witness his companion’s death.

No. ‘companion’ didn’t cut it. Peel was a friend. The truest, best friend he’d ever imagined he could have. And his friend was making a mad, suicidal rush to do as much damage as he could before they ripped him to pieces, and Dixon wouldn’t even be able to bear witness to the bitter end.

And then the world exploded.

_____

“Stupid bloody Brit,” sighed Peel. It had just been rotten, horrible luck. Just as he’d been getting ready to signal to Dunthorpe that the last phase of their ambush was in place and ready, when he’d slipped and fallen, landing on the radio. He hadn’t broken it, but by the time he recovered the thing and shaken the mud off it, bent the antenna back into place, the SAS man had already begun his last run. “Damned cowboy bastard, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

But he knew what the man was doing. Peel had done similar things in the past himself. Dunthorpe was going to get close enough and start firing at the bundle they’d hidden, hoping to detonate it. He must have thought the URP had captured or killed Peel, and was staking everything on this last, desperate gambit.

And there was nothing Peel could do. Nothing except to wait until Ackerman moved Dixon and Tania and Figgs out of the danger zone…

…Which happened even as the first of the URP bullets struck Dunthorpe. He jerked back, hit in the shoulder, and he almost dropped his weapon, but after a second, he leaned forward and bulled-dozed ahead. Another hit him somewhere in the torso, and he spun half around, but kept coming. Peel knew he was dead. Even if he made it another foot, another ten feet, he was a dead man running.

And Peel aimed the modified radio, prayed it was only superficially damaged in the fall, and triggered it.

Figgs was too close to the hidden cache of explosives. Two grenades Dunthorpe had jury-rigged together with a bundle of bullets and wired to a simple radio-activated detonator. The whole infernal device cached at the base of the bridge near where Ackerman stood. The blast threw the Brit forward when it went up with an air-flattening whomp of sudden flame and deafening noise, staggering into Dixon and growling with frustrated pain. And then all of them felt the roaring heat of the blast wave. Peel spied Dixon squeeze his eyes shut against the hot fist that pummeled him, reached for Tania to cover her.

And then the other two grenades, carefully placed, exploded as well, and there was a triangle of fiery columns blasting up into the jungle, Ackerman in the middle.

_____

He couldn’t have survived that prayed Dixon. Nothing could have survived such an inferno.

With a groaning crack loud even over the screams of the burning URP soldiers, the tree bridge shifted under the flames and carved a great divot out of the earth that held it. And then it slowly fell, crumbling a huge portion of jungle floor down into the crevice with it as it went. Two URP men were on it as it fell, and the bald man in the middle of the bridge, of course, the man he had suspected to be Peel, but whom he recognized in the last moment as Dunthorpe. The man must have shaved his head with his knife during the previous night because of the insects and the insane heat of the jungle, the man who had sacrificed himself in vain… Sergeant Ewan Dunthorpe of Turnbridge Wells in Kent, who had once thought of being a barrister but decided the work wasn’t noble enough. They all fell into the chasm.

Ackerman roared again and strode out through the flames, his skin and the meat under it blistering from the furnace, that black tar slicking through his veins and bubbling up under the new wounds, salving them, slaking them, healing them, and Dixon thought he might go insane with the sight of the gargoyle heading toward them, but held onto one thought even as he felt the sharp stab of Peel’s loss, even as he watched the monster gibbering and shifting and shaking that dreadful spear.

I promised Tania, was that thought, and he waited for whatever would happen next to happen.

“What was it?” demanded Ackerman, reaching out for Figgs, slinging him up into the air with a smoking, napalmed arm. “You said nothing about rocket launchers, you sniveling weasel! What did Peel shoot at us?”

Dixon slowly turned and looked at Figgs dangling in the air. Tania had the same expression on her face he was sure he had. An expression of blank disbelief.

“Figgs?” he whispered. “You—”

“It wasn’t on the chopper!” protested the Englishman. “Whatever it was, he didn’t bring it with him! It was probably something Kazumu had hidden away.”

“Those KLF idiots had nothing hidden away I didn’t know about!” roared Ackerman, shaking the man in his fist like a rag doll. “What other surprises do you have for me, worm? Perhaps the woman has a nuclear bomb hidden in her bra?”

“No!” protested Figgs. “Jesus Christ, man! Put me down!”

Ackerman snarled and flung Figgs headlong into a nearby shrub, where the man landed with a whimpering crash. The ex-Special Forces soldier spun and whipped his spear around, aiming it at Tania. Dixon saw, on the man’s belt, the long-range radio he’d been so concerned about back at the ambush, the black tar writhing around it yet leaving it untouched, and marveled at the strangeness, the blasphemous horror of what the man had become.

“On your feet!” howled Ackerman. “We will make our target by nightfall, or the woman dies despite your pitiful defiance!”

“How long has Figgs been working for you?” asked Dixon, not looking at the man trying to crawl out of the bushes.

Ackerman looked at Dixon, and beneath the mask his filed-tooth smile grew wide. “Figgs doesn’t work for me,” he said, a dark chuckle in his voice. “We’re partners. Isn’t that right, Officer Figgs?”

“Fuck you,” groaned the Englishman, shaking his head groggily. “Now get this fucking wire off my wrists. You’ve blown my cover.”

“Your cover?” said Ackerman incredulously. “You insane asshole. Even now you think I’m going to keep my end of the bargain? Even after the hell you’ve been through the last couple of days? You seriously think I’m going to allow you any part of the glory that awaits me at the end of our road?”

Figgs stared at him for a long moment, trembling in pain, blinked twice, then nodded his head. “Yeah,” he said. “I think you are.”

“Oh?” asked Ackerman, cocking his head at the MI6 operative. “Why is that?”

“Because if you don’t. Stand back!” he warned as Ackerman took a step forward. “All it’ll take is a couple of words from me, and Dixon will know…”

“Silence!” roared Ackerman, obviously wanting to lunge, to rip open Figgs’ guts with the spear, but held back by some dawning realization.

“You wouldn’t!”

“Tell me,” said Dixon quietly. “Whatever it is, tell me.”

“Not yet,” said Figgs watchfully, looking around. The blast had taken out the rest of the URP soldiers, only Ackerman and his mask surviving the flames that even now were dying out around them in the damp jungle. “I’m down to one card in my hand, and I won’t play it right yet, Yank. Now, Major Ackerman, how are we going to do this?”

“I should have killed you long ago,” said the monster in the mask.

“Yeah, you should have, but you’re not that bright. Tell you what, drop the spear where I can reach it, then step back.”

Snarling, Ackerman did what he was told, though the single black eye in the center of the mask roiled and raged like a tornado in the dark teak of the mask.

Figgs slowly moved forward, watching Ackerman, watching Tania and Dixon who kneeled helplessly in the mud and ashes, and maneuvered himself so that the wire between his wrists was against the sharp edge of the spearhead, and then in one smooth stroke his hands were free.

He picked up the spear and hefted it. “Nice weapon, Major,” he said. “Magical?”

“No,” said Ackerman.

“I believe you,” said Figgs earnestly. “Really, I do. But I’m keeping this fucking thing, just in case. I know how hard it would be to kill you. That Messenger’s mask you wear makes you a tough hombre, but this spear looks like an agreeable thing to try it with, if I have to. Now, shall we get going?”

“You don’t have to do this, Figgs,” said Dixon, despair suffusing him like a fever. “Whatever he’s promising you—”

“It’s not him,” said Figgs, looking at the American. “It’s someone much more powerful than this pathetic excuse for a cultist.”

“What?”

“It’s Nyarlathotep. No one is ever as convincing at giving you what you want than a real god.”

“You’re supposed to be defending Earth against this shit!” protested Dixon. “If you let the chaos take over, the entire world dies!”

“Naw,” said Figgs, twirling the spear in his hands. “This isn’t the god himself we’re releasing here, just one aspect of him. A powerful one, true, but one that we can harness, channel, control. So long as you know the right spells. Which I do. And when this entire business is over, I’ll be the most powerful man on the planet.”

“You’ll be dead,” said Dixon flatly. “You can’t succeed, whatever it is you’re planning to do.”

“Sure I can,” said Figgs, smiling. “You’re playing on the wrong side, chap. And I’m too old for all this idealism anymore. Now get your sad ass up out of the mud and let’s get marching, shall we? We’re almost in the last innings.”

_____

Peel watched in amazement as the events unfolded beneath him, wondering how he could have been so blind.

Ackerman had known about their mission. Had set it up perfectly, planting Fargo where Peel would find him, knowing that they would come for him. And who was right there on the scene in Nairobi, by chance?

Figgs.

Who had a good relationship with the KLF, facilitating their insertion into the jungle?

Figgs.

Who survived when everyone else around him died horribly?

“And who’s lived way too long now?” whispered the Australian to himself, raising his gun, squinting through his scope at the spear-wielding form of Figgs.

Then his radio squawked.

“I’m near you,” said Plenary, shouting over the noise of the rotors. “I can’t get a fix on your GPS unit, though.”

“That’s because bloody Figgs must have screwed with it,” whispered Peel, tucked into a hollow beneath some monstrous, drooping tropical bush. Ackerman and the rest of the band had moved along, but Peel wasn’t a hundred percent sure that they hadn’t circled around to check their back trail, so stayed as quiet as he could. “When the time comes, I’ll figure out some way to make a signal for you.”

“I’ve seen your style,” said Plenary, his voice strong from the radio. “You’ll probably set off a nuke.”

“I’d like to,” said the Australian, feeling equal parts proud and annoyed at Plenary’s quip. “What do you have for me?”

“A mess of conflicting information about the Spiraling Worm, consolidated from half a dozen ancient dusty books we’ve got in our Special Documents room, including a copy of The Masked Messenger. Not the English translation Rudolph Pearson made, but the original Arabic.”

“So what do you know?”

“This mask has been around for centuries, a tradition of the cult of the Spiraling Worm. Whoever wears it, they call him Skunga-Zu, and he is their leader, chosen by Nyarlathotep and powerful beyond any human comparison. Their duty, to free the real aspect of their god, the Spiraling Worm! Sometimes referred to as Ahtu. Bottom line. If this thing gets loose, we’re going to have a hell of a time containing it.”

“What’s Ackerman planning?” asked Peel, cautiously raising his head and looking around. “Why does he need Dixon?”

“Hard to say,” said Plenary. “It’s probably something horrible, though. This Nyarlathotep thing is not a nice god. I’d appreciate it if you’d find some way to rescue my man, Peel.”

“I’m working on it,” grunted the Australian as he got to his feet. “Stay close. If you have to set down, do it, but keep an ear out for my squawk and be ready to get to me on a moment’s notice.” Peel wondered if there was a clearing nearby, a bai, or would Plenary just incinerate a patch of jungle for touch down?

“We’ve got two choppers fully loaded, Peel,” said Plenary. “If you need a bunch of Hellfire missiles up Ackerman’s ass, just let me know.”

“It’ll probably come to something like that,” said the Major. “But I’ve got to get Dixon and the woman away first. I’ll keep in touch.”

“Good,” said the American. “You’re a fine soldier, Major Peel. I hope the Australians appreciate you.”

“I blew up half of Sydney,” said Peel, slowly moving through the jungle, the stench of flame and death filling his nose. “I’m hated everywhere back home.”

_____

The night came slowly, but it came.

They were an awkward procession. Ackerman and Figgs to either side of Dixon and Tania, the Englishman wielding the massive spear and the masked monster carrying his bloody knife. And no one talking. Dixon had continued to work on the wire binding his wrists, and he thought he might — might — be able to break the thing with one final surging twist, but knew that to do so now would be suicide. He couldn’t accomplish anything in his current position except for maybe to make a desperate lunge into the rainforest.

But that would mean leaving Tania behind, and he’d promised her he wouldn’t do that.

All he could do was hope that a moment would present itself, some brief instant of time in which he could make a small bit of difference, grab a weapon, make a surprise attack, do something that would swing the balance of power away from the warped Special Forces soldier and the traitorous British agent.

And, though it was probably a false hope, he could imagine that Peel might still be alive, might have found some way to traverse the chasm they’d passed and might hustle to catch up to them.

And, like Figgs had suggested, Tarzan might come swooping through the trees to rescue them.

“We’re here,” said Ackerman finally, as the sun disappeared through the curtain of green around them and as the jungle noises intensified. Dixon stopped when the rest of them did and even though he knew that he would die here, at whatever terminus Ackerman had determined for him, he still felt a surge of curiosity in his brain.

There, through the trees and the dim, monochromatic haze of dusk, he saw a dark gray stone.

“H. Rider Haggard,” said Figgs, casually tossing the spear up and down in his hand. “It’s like the bloody movies, init?”

“For centuries the Spiraling Worm has been imprisoned in the Temple of Akhnut,” said Ackerman, a painfully intense desire limning his voice. “For centuries we have sought its release.”

“Well, now you’ve got some competent help,” said Figgs. “Let’s get this shit done, shall we?”

“You won’t win,” said Dixon.

Figgs turned to him and smiled. “Jesus, man,” he said, twirling the spear in his hands so that the razor-sharp head spun like a bore. “You’re a regular Boy Scout, aren’t you?”

“And you’re a slimy sack of shit,” whispered Tania. “You’ll sell out the entire human race for thirty pieces of silver.”

Figgs shook his head sadly and stopped playing with the spear. “Believe it or not, my lady, I wish you weren’t here. I have no desire to see you die.”

“Sorry I can’t return the sentiment,” said the woman, glaring at him. “I’d pay big money to have a front-row seat at your death.”

“We move,” said Ackerman. “Figgs, our moment of glory is at hand.”

“Just remember, mate,” said the British agent, “that I know the same spells you do. I won’t hesitate to cut your head off if you try to fuck me over.”

“We’re partners,” smiled the masked man.

And they moved through the final fringe of trees and entered the clearing of the temple.

It was a stunning edifice, even in the dying light of the sun, where the feeble red rays splashed on the vine-covered granite like a Hollywood special effect.

Dixon thought that Figgs had been right. It was something out of an Allan Quatermain novel, or an Indiana Jones movie. The surrounding trees were maybe forty or fifty feet tall, but the pile of stone and gold before them topped them by an easy two stories. The clearing leading up to the temple was crawling with creepers and vines, but no substantial vegetation grew there, nothing that would impede their view of the terrifying structure or their path to it. And the high pillars gleaming with incarnadine bands of precious metals seemed like monstrous spider legs, the dark, cavernous entrance to the pile seemed like a fanged, venomous maw, the jutting slabs of marble and slate atop the building seemed like bony horns that loomed menacingly in the dying light.

And as they moved forward the jungle grew silent, as though in terrified prostration before the alien, wondrous horror of the temple of Akhnut.

“It’s Egyptian,” whispered Tania as Ackerman forced them forward. “It’s horribly wrong, somehow, but that’s definitely an Egyptian design.”

“Nyarlathotep was big in Egypt,” said Dixon grimly. “I remember that from my research.” He sensed that this was more than just the work of pharaohs. That the temple was far more ancient, built from materials that defied human explanation, constructed by the hands or the tentacles of the elder species from the stars, and that they had influenced the Egyptians, and not the other way around.

The four got closer, fighting their way through the field of obscenely bloated vines that snaked across the ground like intestines. There was a queer metallic odor to the whole place, a stench of copper and blood, and the air was as unmoving and still as in an abattoir.

Centered in the gargantuan building, held in place by great slabs of weathered alien stone, was an enormous door. Black wood beams twenty feet tall banded by corroded bronze straps as wide as a human body. Here and there on the wood and the metal, were slight scorch marks or small slivers missing. The same wood that forged the grotesque Mask on Ackerman’s face.

“That sooty area?” gestured Ackerman, waving his knife forward to show a hand span of discolored wood on one door. “That was a dynamite blast.”

“How much dynamite?” asked Figgs.

“Stacked four feet high against the door,” said Ackerman, grimacing. As they got even closer to the temple, the toothed tentacles on the mask had waved frenetically, as though they sensed the proximity to their master. “The explosion destroyed most of the clearing and five of my men. It put a ding in the wood.”

“Who sealed the temple?” asked Dixon in a voice broken by exertion and pain. The Major and the MI6 man turned to look at him.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Ackerman. “It was long, long ago, and the race of beings who trapped the Worm are long dead and damned.”

“So here we are,” said Dixon, struggling to stand up straight, to face death with at least a show of resolve and good posture. To stand like a man against whatever horror awaited him. “How do you open the doors?”

“With a ritual, of course,” smiled Ackerman, showing his filed-sharp incisors through the dried blood on his lips, the mask’s pseudopodia twirling and writhing in some obscene dance of glee. “Figgs, take Dixon to the temple steps.”

Figgs nodded and moved toward the bound man. He poked the spear before him, its edge gleaming in a perfectly straight line of glowing red as the dying sun struck it. “Forward march, Yank. It’s the end of the line.”

“And what of Tania?” asked Dixon, trying to get some moisture on his lips and tongue, but failing. “You said you didn’t want to see her die.”

“I’ll deal with the woman,” said Ackerman, sheathing the knife and moving toward the Australian journalist. “I won’t kill her, I swear it. Instead, I’ll just cast the same spell on her that immobilized her friends.”

“Bastard!” yelled Dixon, stopping halfway through a step. “Do that, and I won’t cooperate!”

“We no longer need your cooperation,” said Figgs coldly, jamming the point of the spear into the small of the American’s back. “Just your blood. Count yourself fortunate that the good Major doesn’t make a light supper of your lady friend while you watch.”

“Don’t kill him!” said Tania suddenly. “If it’s blood you need, take mine!”

Ackerman smiled toothily at her and shook his head. “Such nobility. Such self-sacrifice. You remind me of me when I was younger, before the Army fucked me over.”

“Don’t listen to her,” said Dixon. “Let her go.”

“I think not,” said the Major. “But I’ll make sure she doesn’t interfere with the ritual. Kneel, woman. When you freeze, it’ll make it easier for you to maintain your physical integrity.”

“I won’t kneel for you,” she said, staring defiantly at him.

“Suit yourself,” said Ackerman, and raised his hands preparatory to casting the spell.

And suddenly Figgs screamed in pain and spun around. Dixon whipped his eyes away from Tania to see what had happened and saw the spear fly from the Englishman’s hand as his shoulder disintegrated in a spray of bone and blood.

Dixon didn’t hesitate. He spun and leaped, wrenching his wrists in one desperate yank that sent the wire deep into his flesh… and snapped it! His endless hours of twisting and turning the biting metal had borne fruit, weakening the wire just enough, and for the first time in days he could swing his hands around to his front, weak though they were from inactivity and lack of blood. He dove at the surprised, snarling form of Ackerman, grabbed the radio from the man’s belt and rolled away.

Ackerman howled and swung down one mighty fist, but Dixon was already stumbling through the vines away from the temple, finding the right frequency, clicking on the radio and screaming into it.

“Home delivery! Home delivery!” he yelled frantically. They’d be able to pick up on his coordinates from the GPS unit inside the long-range radio, and soon an American Hercules would wing its way over the jungle to put a definite end to this obscenity.

“Roger,” came the voice through the static and hiss. “Message understood.”

Dixon reached down and smashed the radio on a protruding hunk of rock that jutted out of the jungle floor like an antediluvian behemoth’s tooth, watched it shatter into five pieces, and stood back up. He turned around calmly, waiting for the knife that was surely coming to disembowel him. Dixon was going to die; he knew. But he wouldn’t be the gateway that allowed some hideous monstrosity into the world to wreak chaos on the unsuspecting billions.

And Ackerman threw back his head and laughed. Figgs was still grunting in pain, collapsed to his knees while he poured blood onto the stone of the temple porch, and Tania kneeled trembling and wide-eyed in the muck.

The masked Major roared in glee and triumph.

“You fucked up, boyo,” gasped Figgs, raising his head. “This was his plan all along.”

More bullets came from the jungle, whanging off the marble near Figgs and causing him to yelp as ricochets sent shards of biting stone into his face. He rolled off the raised area, threw himself into the underbrush, and the unseen sniper turned his attention to the howling, arms-raised form of Ackerman.

More holes appeared in the man, spurting black blood from his torso, his head. One bullet shattered the man’s lower jaw, sending white shrapnel and bits of bloody flesh into the dim air, and Ackerman looked down at Dixon, ignoring the gunfire that raked him, and hissed through what remained of his mouth even as the black tar spilled from his veins to repair the damage.

“I haa woo,” he said, and Dixon knew that he meant ‘I have won’ and felt his guts sinking down into his bowels as the implications of what he had done finally hit him.

And then Ackerman casually, deliberately reached down, grabbed Tania by the hair and lifted her to her feet. Dixon jumped forward, trying to stop whatever was going to happen, screamed, sprinted toward the tableau in an agonizing limp, but was too late.

Ackerman spun the woman around, bent slightly over and slashed the knife across the back of the journalist’s legs at the ankles, sending blood spurting as she screamed in agony and tried to kick back. Ackerman dropped her then, and she stood for half a second and tried to get away, but collapsed as her ruined tendons failed her. “Bastard!” she screamed.

Dixon got to within ten feet and saw that the man’s face had repaired.

“I the greatest Skunga-Zu. I’ll allow you to witness what comes next,” said Ackerman, smiling through a jumble of black oil, red meat and white bone. “And bear witness to the majesty that is our lord, Nyarlathotep. Kill Figgs if you like. He’ll kill the both of you and whoever’s shooting at us from the jungle given the chance.”

Dixon staggered forward, tripping on a shard of masonry, a hump of vine, feeling his ribs rattle against each other in his chest, trying to reach the man, trying to perform at least one final act of defiance by killing the bastard before the bomb got here, but knew he would fail.

Ackerman easily jogged away from him, back toward the sheltering jungle.

Tania screamed and rolled, trying to get to her damaged feet and crumbling again beneath her severed Achilles tendons, falling to the ground in a bloody heap.

And, as Ackerman just got into his stride, handily leaping over obstacles and dodging rocks in his way, Dixon watched as a lazy silver flash came from the temple, curved through the air, and slowly descended on a perfect trajectory, smiting Ackerman in the back of the head.

Figgs had recovered and thrown the spear.

_____

Peel sprinted out from cover, gun hot in his hand, knowing that he couldn’t do anything more from his distance than inflict superficial damage on the monster in the mask and knowing that Ackerman would get away no matter what he did, but wanting to reach Dixon. He knew the American wouldn’t leave Tania to die.

He sympathized. Dixon had a soft spot for her, and he would suffer the torments of hell rather than leave her to her fiery fate. But it wasn’t making things easier, this altruism.

And then he saw the spear throw, and even though he’d tried to kill Figgs, he mentally applauded the man’s accuracy under pressure.

Ackerman crashed to the ground, the spear sticking up from him like a conqueror’s flag.

_____

Dixon cursed himself as he stumbled by the wounded Australian woman and leaving her in her agonies, but knew that it was more important that he reach the downed Special Forces man.

He spotted Figgs groan and collapse again into the creepers, bushes and insects of the African floor.

And Ackerman, who had hitherto produced a stunning range of sounds from screaming victory to flat-out, pissed-off rage, now emitted a steam-kettle whistle of keening agony that almost caused Dixon to pause, as though the noise was a physical blow coming at him through the thick air. But he kept coming, staggering on his abused legs, breathing through his exhausted lungs, wanting only to commit murder before he died.

Ackerman screamed again as Dixon neared. He writhed beneath the silvery shaft of the spear like a bug on a killing board. The knife he’d been carrying was a few feet away, shining dully in the underbrush, flung from his hand by the missile’s impact, and Dixon veered toward it. Tania had quieted, and in the breaths between Ackerman’s outbursts the American could hear Peel crashing through the foliage towards them all, but didn’t turn. His attention remained focused on the knife.

At least until, with one final banshee howl, Ackerman surged up from the ground, forcing his body up onto the shaft of the spear in quick, excruciating jerks, raised his face toward Dixon, gave one wide smile, black tar pulsing from his bloody mouth in vomitus gushes, and Dixon stared straight into that black onyx eye.

The eye stared back at him — gleamed brightly, focusing on him — and then the mask leaped.

_____

Peel saw Ackerman pulling himself up the spear, impaling himself further with every inch, losing his bowels through new vents in his abdomen in spilling coils, desperate to reach his maximum height before he died, and the Australian forced himself to run faster. He saw Dixon swaying, stumbling towards something in the dirt, saw the journalist Tania Selby trying desperately to bandage some wicked wounds at her ankles with the muddy, bloody remains of her blouse, and couldn’t see Figgs at all. But then all attention flew back to Ackerman.

The mask’s tentacles had gone wild with the attack, waving and whipping like electricity was shooting through them. But then they stilled and tensed, and Peel instinctively skidded to a halt, his boots squelching in the soft dirt and stone, and raised his rifle.

The black mask shot from Ackerman’s head straight towards Dixon, and even as Peel fired a wild blast — missing the thing entirely — he saw Ackerman, finally, at last, bareheaded.

The parasite, symbiote, whatever the mask was, had eaten through Ackerman’s scalp during its long residence there, stripped the top half of his head to bare, gleaming bone. Long black cracks through the cranium showed where the thing had fixed itself to the man, and the hideous, empty eye sockets seemed to stare at the Australian, though the eyes had long atrophied or the mask had eaten them away. In that last instant before death finally caught up to Major Charles Ackerman, Peel stared straight into the empty cave of the man’s skull, straight through the void and at the stark bone of the back of his head…

And then Ackerman slumped — jerked — and slid down the shaft of the spear again, red blood already clumping and clotting with the final dribbles of the black tar now dead and inert, his years-long mission at an end.

_____

Dixon wasn’t sure how he found the strength to move so quickly, nor how he whipped his exhausted arm up so precisely, nor how he kept his sanity as the insane monstrosity lunged through the air at him, tentacles vibrating in keening eagerness, the ebony eye wide and hungry, the alien wood of the thing already shifting, ready for a new host.

But he ducked and whipped his hand up, smashing the thing off its trajectory and sending it whizzing down onto the ground, and the mask’s teeth raked his palm and thumb as he touched it and bright red blood instantly welled up in razor-sharp lines.

Dixon spun toward the thing, readying a desperate stomp, but it had bounced instantly from the earth and thrown itself back into the air with no turnaround time, aiming directly at the American’s head again.

Dixon yowled and hurled himself to the side, and the mask smacked into his shoulder, where it clung with the desperation of a drowning man and the hunger of a vampire. The NSA agent felt the thing’s claws digging deep into the meat of his chest, his neck, and frantically grabbed it with his free hand as it scrabbled up toward his face.

And then there was a monstrous thunderclap from directly behind him, and amid his terror and pain and desperation he thought, it didn’t take long for the chopper to get here and at least it’ll die with me and, finally, I’m not dead.

The mask didn’t shatter under the burst of bullets, but it lost its grip on Dixon and flew backwards, hitting the ground in a whirling spin. Again it bounced, again instantly leaped toward the man.

But this time Peel had the range and the aim, and he shoved Dixon out of the way and fired a full withering barrage at the mask as it jumped, and this time chips of black, bleeding wood flew from it, several of the tentacles were severed and sprayed ebon ichor as they withered and died, and the mask went back down, skittered hesitantly under the rain of high-velocity bullets…

And then it shot away, scurrying into the undergrowth, flinging leaves and dirt up into the air as it beelined away from the bite of the lead, the pain of the Australian’s weapon. As Dixon grabbed his injured shoulder and stared wild-eyed and joyfully at Peel, the mask screamed, an utterly alien howl of loss and rage and insanity, a low-pitched thrum of dissonant noise that shook the jungle.

And then it was gone.

“Peel!” said Dixon, blood oozing from between his fingers. “I thought you’d died!”

“There’s still time,” said the Australian grimly, looking around. “What did I miss? What was the play with the radio?”

“Oh, shit,” said Dixon, his grin disappearing. “I called in the airstrike. The helo ought to be here soon.”

“Good,” grunted Peel. “The MOAB should take care of this temple.”

“It’s what they wanted,” said Dixon, moving as fast as he could toward Tania. “They’ve been trying to open that door for hundreds of years, but never had enough power to break it.”

Peel paused for a long moment, looking at the temple and its massive, impervious doors. Dixon saw the implications sink in for Peel as he shook his head, and he said, “Oh, fuck.”

“Let’s get out of here,” said Dixon, reaching the woman. “There’s no way we can stop the thing now, and all we can do is not be here when the explosion happens.”

“Wait,” said Peel, reaching for his short-range radio. “There might be something we can do.”

_____

“We’ll give it a shot,” said Plenary. “But this is a big fucking jungle we’re flying over, and I have no idea where you are. The chances of us intercepting the bombing Hercules are virtually nil.”

“Remember, I told you I’d find some way to signal you?” said Peel, his voice tinny over the radio.

“Yes,” said Plenary, scanning the endless carpet of green below. It was nearing full dark now, and it was hard to see anything other than an undulating sea of treetops.

And then a flare some dozen miles to their left, a sudden explosion that pulsed beneath the tree line, yet was still bright enough to see, and the chopper pilot banked into a sharp turn and made for it even as it disappeared back into blackness.

“You see that?” asked Peel.

“We’re on our way,” said Plenary grimly.

“Good,” said Peel, “because I’m now officially out of ammo and there’s a fucking alien parasite running around down here looking to eat our brains.”

“You field agents have all the fun,” said Plenary. “Hold tight. We’ll be there in two ticks.”

“Just get here before the bomber,” said Peel. “You get us out of here, I’ll let you go on the next field mission.”

“Deal,” said Plenary. “And, Major Peel?”

“Yeah.”

“Good job.”

_____

“Where the fuck are you, Figgs?” yelled Peel, stepping away from the smoldering, smoking blast pile. He’d been frantic with a machete, cutting back the small trees, hoping to widen the landing zone, and to protect against the mask, wherever it was. “We’re getting out of here, and if you’re not with us, you’re going to die!”

“He thinks he can control it,” said Dixon quietly, wrapping the bandages even tighter around Tania’s slashed legs. She’d finally passed out from exhaustion and blood loss, but she still breathed shallowly and her eyes fluttered beneath her lids. “He’s been studying up on spells, and when the bomb blasts open the door, he will try to bend the Worm to his will.”

“Fucking idiot,” fumed Peel. “Figgs! I swear to you, you asshole, that I will hunt you down and kill you if you don’t show yourself right now!”

“He’s not going anywhere,” said Dixon. “Listen!”

Peel stilled himself and stood silently, and in the jungle night he heard the distant thump of a helicopter’s rotors. And then he realized there were two vehicles, rapidly nearing their position.

“Plenary’s here first,” said Peel. “He said there were two choppers.”

“Good,” said Dixon. “Peel, we’ve got to get into the sky right now. We can’t waste time looking for Figgs. If we stop the bomb from dropping, we can find him later. If he makes it out of the jungle alive. But we can’t do anything if we’re fucking dead.”

“Understood,” said Peel, still looking around as though the missing MI6 man would pop into view.

And then the searchlights came looping through the trees, and Dixon and Peel began waving their arms to direct the rescue.

_____

“You don’t know the frequency, Dixon?” asked Plenary once they were all back up in the air in the Apache helicopter.

“It was a onetime message,” said the agent, wincing as one soldier smeared antibiotic paste over his myriad wounds. He’d taken his shirt off and Peel shook his head at the bruises, cuts and swells of cracked ribs that showed through his partner’s skin. It was amazing the bloke remained conscious, let alone kept the ability to move — but adrenaline was like that. Tania remained passed out on a stretcher, with equal attention directed to her wounds, and a blood transfusion in the works. Later on, if they all survived the night, Dixon would probably sleep for twenty hours.

If they survived the night.

“Come on, man,” said Dixon to his boss. “You know the procedure as well as I do. Once the order’s given, there’s no way to call the run off, ‘cause they’ve gone dark. We’ll have to maneuver in front of them and get them to divert.”

“I won’t fire on an American gunship,” said Plenary, shaking his head.

“You might have to,” said Peel. “If that bomb drops, and Figgs can actually control the god that emerges—”

“What the hell kind of mission is this?” asked the airman working on Dixon, raising his eyes to the Australian. “You’re talking about shooting down a friendly? And what’s this about a ‘god’?”

“I’m not suggesting that, but we need to get in their way,” said Peel. “Besides, if that thing gets out, nothing between here and Lagos is going to survive through the night.”

“I think I’ve got ‘em, sir!” came the voice of the pilot from the cockpit, excitedly. “Bearing one, one, five!”

“Light everything up!” said Plenary. “I want spots aimed right for the Hercules, I want shots across her bow, I want fucking missiles exploding all over the place. We need to make them stop and call us.”

“I’ll do what I can, sir,” said the pilot, flipping on both spotlights and swiveling them toward the distant bulk of the bomber helicopter. Fifty feet off their starboard side, the other Apache did the same, and Dixon forced himself off his seat and leaned toward the window.

_____

Figgs breathed deeply, ignoring the pain from his shattered shoulder, ignoring his bruises, his cuts, the agony in his bowels. He focused on the words in his mind, focused on them so sharply that they began to crystalize, to take solid form.

Around him the jungle grew silent, though there was plenty of noise from the aircraft that circled overhead — but he put that out of his mind as well. It was bloody crunch time now. He’d gotten this far, come this long, dealt with maniacs and monsters and madness, and it was about time to collect a little long-overdue back pay. Figgs didn’t want to die a horrible death, or lose his mind, or get himself infected by some hideous alien mutagen. No, he wanted power. He’d worked so long trying to stop the maniacs of the world, and for what? Those he had encountered who controlled the actual powers of the Outer Gods, they were his heroes. They were who he aspired to become, immortal sorcerers who controlled the destiny of humans. He wanted to live forever, and he wanted that life-controlling actual power.

“Nyarlathotep,” he started, beginning the invocation. “Great Wanderer, Masked Messenger, Crawling Chaos, Seeker Between the Stars, hear my words.”

And with a rumbling scream, the mask flew from the darkness-shrouded jungle and latched onto Figgs’ face.

You wanted my answer, came the voice inside Figgs’ head as it smothered him, here it is!

_____

“What the fuck?” screamed the Captain of the Hercules. “Are we under attack?”

“They’re not aiming at us, sir,” said the young Air Force sergeant. “But they’re using a lot of firepower.”

“Who the hell are they?”

The Captain swerved into a ponderous turn as the night sky around them rippled with firework explosions, but quickly locked back onto the coordinates. The choppers dancing around him looked American. They flew as though Americans piloted them, and the display of firepower was for damn sure American — but there was an outside chance, the slightest, most minuscule stretch of possibility that the Congolese rebel group they were here to eradicate had gotten their hands on a couple of Apaches and learned how to fly them, while his mission was a no-abort. So he kept flying, kept searching for the laser signature his superiors ordered him to drop the MOAB onto.

“I don’t know, sir,” said the Sergeant, looking up from his headset, his face mottled red and white from the exploding ordnance outside the Hercules’ windows. “We’re supposed to be the only bird in the air right now.”

In response, the Captain grunted. “No laser signature, but I found the target. Strap in and get ready to drop the Mother.”

“And the other choppers?” asked the sergeant. The other airmen in the Hercules waited for an answer.

“We can’t take ‘em out,” said the Captain. “But they can’t stop us.”

_____

“Jesus,” said Dixon, watching as the vast form of the Hercules whipped past them toward the temple clearing. “They’re not stopping.”

“Well,” said Plenary, “they’re not supposed to.”

“Shit,” said Peel. “How do we keep them from dropping that bomb?”

“That’s what the pilot of the other Apache keeps asking us,” said Plenary, gesturing toward the cockpit and the loud squawking chatter of the radio. He had to keep his voice at a horribly loud volume, because the explosions outside spoke in thunderous voices, as if intoned by God.

“Shoot him down,” said Peel. “Cripple them so they’re forced to land.”

“Our weapons aren’t that accurate, sir,” said the Captain of the other Apache, overhearing them. “A crippling shot is more likely to destroy than just cripple.”

“Shit,” exclaimed Peel grimly, “what about getting in their way, and forcing them to balk?”

“Do you know how dangerous that is,” said the pilot of their Apache, turning back to his instruments.

And Peel flashed back to the jungle, to Dunthorpe’s voice coming over the short-range to him, asking for permission to shoot Dixon and end the whole mess. Such an act would have finished the business. Without Dixon’s memorized code phrase, the Hercules would still be back in Kenya sitting on the pad, the bomb in her belly harmless, her crew drinking bad coffee and chatting about the baseball season.

But it would have made Peel a monster.

“Oh, shit,” he said, closing his eyes.

“Tell you what we’ll do,” said his pilot, and they went into a dive.

_____

For a long couple of seconds, the explosions ceased, and the Captain of the Hercules saw the two Apaches dart past him toward the target.

“What are they doing?” he asked, not expecting an answer. He’d flown combat operations in the mountains of Afghanistan, so he was used to tension and pressure, but now he faced a more formidable opponent — confusion.

“They’re getting between us and the target,” said the radioman, looking down at his panel.

“And they stopped shooting at us.” said the Captain.

“They weren’t shooting at us,” said the sergeant. “They were shooting around us.”

The Captain thought for a moment, conscious that they were only seconds away from the drop point. The other aircraft sure weren’t acting like enemies.

But it didn’t matter.

“Prepare to drop the Mother,” he said, and behind him the bomb team began their countdown.

_____

“Now what?” asked Dixon as they hovered. Beneath them, he could feel the eldritch force of the temple of Akhnut radiating out, as though it sensed the power that would crack it open and welcomed it. It was as though some primal radiation surged and ebbed, the breath of a cyclopean monster eagerly awaiting release, and Dixon shook his head to clear an oppressive miasma away.

“We can only hope we call their bluff,” said Peel.

“Bloody right,” said the pilot, smiling at his Australianism. “But I don’t think they’ll drop the bomb right on top of us.”

And then they all saw the bomb falling from the womb of the Hercules, an ink-black blob in the African night.

_____

“Bombs away!” shouted the bombardier, and the Hercules instantly whipped into the sharpest turn it was capable of and gunned its engines for escape as the drogue chute deployed and then instantly released, guiding the MOAB bomb down to its rendezvous with the spot Dixon’s GPS unit had painted during its final transmission.

“And may God have mercy on my soul,” said the Captain. He knew he had made the right decision, the proper decision, the legal decision.

But he tasted ashes in his mouth.

_____

“Move!” screamed Plenary, trying to leap to his feet, grunting as he hit the restraint belt, and the Apache moved.

Dixon thought at first that they were getting out of the way, that the helicopter would dart from the falling bomb and that they had lost. But he hadn’t counted on the professionalism, the patriotism, the heroism of the Air Force men who controlled the beast.

They moved, all right. But they moved underneath the falling bomb.

The other Apache did the same, and it was closer.

For long seconds it was silent, barring the whomp of the rotors and the ragged breathing of the men, and Dixon leaned out, straining his eyes in the dim starlight to see what was happening, and he thought he saw the collision when it happened, but he wasn’t sure.

And then a strange, horrifyingly loud clanging noise filled the African air as the MOAB bomb, all thirty feet and twenty thousand pounds of it, struck the whizzing Apache in one of its turbo shaft engines, knocking the thing clean off.

As the helicopter sputtered and tried to recover, whirling in the air like a pinwheel, the bomb continued along its descent, though its trajectory had altered fractionally. It took only another second or two, and then Dixon slammed back against his seat as the entire sky lit up like Armageddon.

_____

Figgs kneeled on the marble steps before the gigantic wooden door and looked through the Messenger’s Mask. The claws on the thing’s tendrils had already sunk themselves into the thin meat of his scalp and he could feel them tickling his brain as they gently waved and slowly insinuated themselves into his prefrontal cortex. It had already eaten out his eyes, but he could still see, through its single black orb.

He could also feel his body changing. Peel’s bullets had shattered his shoulder, but the bones were already knitting themselves together and his veins were filling with the thick black fluid that was the communion wine of this unholy sacrament. He knew that he would rip himself apart for as long as he wore the mask to keep the thing’s powers at full strength. That he would cut holes in his cheeks, would rip ragged gashes in his flesh, would impale himself, slash himself…

He reached down and tore another wet slab of meat off Ackerman’s body, shoved it hungrily into his mouth, began to chew, for Ackerman’s tar had now returned to flesh and blood.

Good, spoke the voice from the mask, this is only the beginning…

It wouldn’t be long now, and his master would be free.

_____

“Did it hit?” screamed Dixon. “Was the temple hit?”

“I can’t bloody see,” yelled Peel at the window. “I had my eyes open when it happened.”

“It came close,” said the Captain, looking at his instruments. “But I think it was off by a hundred yards or so.”

“Is that close enough?” wondered Plenary aloud, squinting as the light died and the darkness rushed back in to fill the space, though the plume of smoke and fire from the explosive still roared through the night like doomsday. “Was the Crawling Chaos released?”

And then another explosion as their sister Apache finally lost its struggle with gravity and inertia and crashed as well.

_____

Figgs felt the blast of the GBU-43/B as though it were the Rapture, whirling in the great conflagration, greedily accepting the buffeting and thin aluminum shrapnel as though it were a benediction.

Before him, in the hellish light and unearthly energies of the bomb, the door to the temple creaked and twisted, and smoke instantly rose from its black surface and flames licked the edges of the massive slab, and then one of the studded bands burst, the iron white-hot and dripping as it dissolved, and the barrier gate of the Spiraling Worm creaked open an atom’s width — a hairsbreadth — half an inch.

Figgs exulted, blood spilling down his lips, his chin, flesh half-chewed, spraying from his mouth as he danced in the nuclear fire of the end of the world. In the blinding light he saw a figure moving towards him, a black, wavering line of matter that spun in slow helices through the endless, churning cauldron of white fire.

The Worm moved fast. Vast chunks of space-time disappeared beneath its approach, atoms screaming as they dissolved, seconds stretching into hours, chains of stars exploding before the path of the Messenger of the Gods, and Figgs kneeled before it, all spells flown from his mind, all cantrips and catches meant to imprison the Outer God forgotten in the insane joy of the Mask at the approach of its Master.

And then the door rendered itself shut again.

_____

In the surviving Apache, Dixon grabbed his head in agony as the vision flooded his mind, the whirling chaotic swirl that gibbered and howled just beyond the gateway, stars, planets and constellations spinning in insanely rapid combinations, light and darkness attacking each other in supernova intensity, lines of force clashing in galaxy-melting conglomerations of sound. He felt, as though his body were separate from him, the hands of Plenary and Peel upon him, keeping him upright as the maelstrom raged in his head, and he fought to maintain sanity, to keep his eyes on the chaos that was spilling from the wedge between our world and the infinite worlds of Nyarlathotep.

If the MOAB bomb had hit directly, it would have blown the gate wide open, as Hitler’s panzers had blown open the Maginot Line. But that extra distance made all the difference. The non-men who had built the door had built with skill, dedication and desperation, and though trees burned half a mile away under the force of the American bomb, though the black sky choked with smoke and flame and death, though the clearing before the temple of Akhnut looked like Hiroshima, and yet the gate held against the forces assailing it from each side.

Meanwhile, the jungle was an inferno, lighting up the night like day.

_____

A crack a half inch wide slowly closed, to a slit the breadth of an assassin’s wire, to a cell full of molecules, and locked away the howling chaos beyond the gate. Hurricanes of screaming air being sucked in by the god’s rage and disappointment, Figgs saw the worm un-loop itself, straighten into a filament wider than the sky and peer down at him from a black, featureless face as big as a universe.

“Forever…” a voice echoed in his head, a voice so awful and squealing and impossible that he sank to his knees and the rest of his brain instantly collapsed beneath the force of the insane strengths that pummeled him.

And the mask echoed that voice as it slurped up the rest of the British agent’s brain and propelled the man backwards into the infernal fire of the jungle.

Forever…

_____

“Forever,” said Dixon, blinking back the light.

“What?” asked Plenary.

“It’ll never give up,” said Dixon, forcing his eyes open, watching the flames beneath them flicker in the wet jungle as though they were napalm-fed. “It’ll never quit, and now it’s got a powerful tool.”

“Fucking Figgs, right?” asked Peel.

“He’s smart, he’s tricky, he knows how to make things happen,” said Dixon, scowling. “And the mask will drive him on until that thing finds a way out.”

“Or we seal the whole thing off forever,” said Peel, staring out the window at the red and orange flowers that slowly faded behind them as the Apache chuffed its way back toward Uganda. “We won’t let the world go up, mate.”

“I know,” said Dixon, remembering the images that had assaulted him for the brief span of seconds the door had tried to blow open. “I know.”

_____

Morning light welcomed the surviving Apache. Its long journey home, passing between the mist shrouded peaks of the Mountains of the Moon, was taking them back to where it all began. Peel felt exhausted, Dixon looked the same, but neither man could sleep. They were wired, like coiled springs trapped in a tight box. Only the sunrise was beautiful, over the African plains and mountainous forests, and it reminded Peel that there were still good things in the world worth fighting for.

“What did we achieve?” Plenary asked, sucking on his water canteen, fighting the sweat that poured from his skin. “I mean, what’s different?”

“Nothing,” said Peel.

“But it could have been worse,” countered Dixon, grimacing against his many wounds that still hurt whenever he moved. “The Spiraling Worm could have gotten free.”

Peel forced a grin. “You know what, though? Look at us. As a species we develop weapons, more and more powerful weapons each year, and for the first time in our history, we can now release monsters like the Worm, that before we could never access.”

Dixon looked over at Tania, still attended to by the soldier-medic. The young man smiled to say she was doing fine, and Peel could see the relief on his friend’s face. “But we stopped it, Peel, remember that. We did good today.”

With a nod, Peel understood the NSA man was right. “But we can do better.”

Plenary scratched the back of his head. Peel noticed him properly then. They had met in the past, briefly, but then Peel had been sick, dying of radiation poisoning. He hadn’t noticed how overweight Plenary was, and how it would take courage for a man of his fitness to enter the heart of darkness, and fight for his men. Peel wondered what had made Plenary the man he was, what horrors he had encountered.

“I need good men,” responded Plenary to Peel’s stares.

“What do you mean?” Peel asked.

“I run a Code-89 investigative team. Dixon speaks highly of you, and I know you are out of a job.”

“You want me to come and work for you, the NSA?”

Plenary nodded, and Dixon grinned.

“I didn’t like you when we first met, Major, but you’ve got my respect now.” Plenary livened to the idea, “And I’m certain you’ve got lots of useful intelligence and field experience we could use.”

The Australian nodded, smiled to himself. A job with the NSA would get him back with Nicola again and allow him to do worthwhile work once more with real intelligence backing him up on the field. “I think I might just take you up on that offer.”

He stared out at the pink-red sky, remembered his early days in the Australian Infantry keeping the peace against despots in Somalia. There was a day three months in, after a bloody battle that saw huge casualties on both sides, and he wondered what the hell he was doing there, if their presence really did anything good. Then he had stumbled onto a group of Somali boys playing soccer, and they asked him to join in, laughing and playing as they did, forgetting their troubles if only for one hour. It had been one of the most memorable hours of his life, a day he remembered fondly, seeing the spirit in the boys’ faces even when they had nothing but a ball and four sticks. Most importantly of all, they felt safe under the watchful eye of his army. He never questioned his dedication ever again.

This was the same. Africa was beautiful. The world was beautiful, full of people who cared, loved, thrilled and lived fulfilling lives. He would do whatever it took to make sure it stayed that way. “So, is that an offer Plenary?”

The NSA man nodded. “Consider yourself recruited as soon as we get back to the US.”

“And you, Dixon? You happy to see a lot more of me in the future?”

His friend laughed. “Of course, Peel, but I’m having a week off first.” He looked over at Tania, who at last appeared to be resting peacefully. “Jessica’s waiting for me, and we got some important catching up to do first.”

The Road to Afghanistan

The three days it took Harrison to flee the black desert of western Pakistan, he barely slept. When he saw the dusk lights of Rawalpindi, he felt relief. Street lights meant normalcy and a safe place to rest.

When Peel drove into the city’s heart he was forcibly slowed, merging with the busy evening traffic. Despite the late hour, he passed busy bazaars and crowded alleys. Hindu temples and Muslim shrines were clean and complete compared to cheaply constructed apartment blocks and government offices, with their rusting steel bars jutting from upper unfinished levels. Mounds of stinking garbage piled against chipped walls. Woman’s faces on billboards were ‘veiled’ with black paint while they left men untouched.

Peel reached the Hoodbhoy Orphanage as it was closing. Identified by his National Security Agency employers three days earlier, they had assured Peel the institution’s reputation was sound. Foreign and local journalists’ accounts spoke highly of their director, a Muslim who accepted all wards, regardless of their religion, gender or ethnicity.

Peel parked in the courtyard. His aching muscles protested as he clambered from the old Soviet Army truck. As he unlatched the rear door, two dozen red and blinking eyes stared back. It took the first child several minutes to shuffle forward and step into their new home, and into a new life.

“Mr. Peel?”

“Yes, sir?” he snapped in a moment of disorientation. Embarrassed, he scratched at the dirt caked to his millimeter-thick hair. He felt drunk, but he wasn’t. He was dead tired.

“Thank you for saving these children, Mr. Peel.” Rashid Hoodbhoy spoke softly, with a formal command of the English language. He watched, with a gentle smile, as his volunteers aided the children as they clambered from the stolen truck. Many needed carrying they were so weak. All needed water. Hoodbhoy’s volunteers applied bandages and disinfectant to a few with infected wounds.

Hoodbhoy welcomed every child with a handshake and a few words in Urdu or Pushto. He spoke with respect and love. Each child looked a little happier, a little less terrified, after they had met with Hoodbhoy.

Before he fainted, Peel found a bench, sat and waited quietly.

A volunteer who didn’t speak any language that Peel could understand offered to clean Peel’s wounds. Peel remembered what he must look like, with the bloodied facial bruises, rope burns raw on his wrists, cigarette burns across his skin, and his tattered clothes. He thanked the volunteer and said he would be fine. He explained that the children needed attention before he did. The man seemed to understand and left Peel alone.

When all children were inside and assigned a place to sleep, Peel rejoined Hoodbhoy.

“The Taliban kidnapped them,” he explained, certain that he must absolve himself by speaking aloud his actions of the last week. “I don’t know how long they were their prisoners, or what tortures the Taliban subjected them to. Also, I don’t speak Urdu or Pushto very well. I can’t hope for much.”

Hoodbhoy smiled with the same warmth and affection given to the orphans. Peel wondered why. He was a foreign spy who lived in a world of deceit and death served daily. It was his people that created orphans.

“I’d look after them all myself,” Peel almost choked, “if I knew how.”

“It is enough that you brought them to me. Be thankful that you achieved as much.”

“But—”

“But don’t dwell upon what you might have done to save them, or it will consume you.”

Peel rubbed his eyes. One girl he had to leave behind, crumpled and bloody, on the roadside. “An orphan died,” he confessed. “She couldn’t have been over ten. An unlucky shot from a sniper.”

Hoodbhoy patted Peel on the shoulder. “I know, my son, her brother told me. But you must learn to forgive yourself. The brother forgives you. You saved his life, remember.”

A lorry sped by outside, rattling the orphanage’s windows and the kerosene-lamps, which were the only illumination, before it disappeared into Rawalpindi’s humid night. For a moment, Peel feared that the Taliban had tracked him even here.

“I have to leave. I could bring my enemies if I stay.”

“Do what you must, my friend.”

“Thank you,” he almost choked again, “My friend.”

He gave Hoodbhoy most of the US dollars he had scavenged from the Taliban, then departed. He drove the old Soviet Army truck five blocks from the orphanage before he abandoned it. His fingerprints would be everywhere inside the cabin, but he had no time to apply tradecraft and clean it. He was too tired to do a proper job anyway, and burning was not an option. Rawalpindi was a busy city, even at night.

With the remaining money, he bought himself a fare on an auto-rickshaw. The hotel the NSA had directed him to was cheap and inconspicuous, exactly what he required.

The Sikh behind the reception desk barely gave Peel a second glance, as if he encountered Peel’s kind every day. He would be a Pentagon shared asset used by the CIA, NSA, and many other US agencies operating in Pakistan.

“You have a parcel waiting for me.”

The tall, thickset man nodded, then disappeared.

Several local men loitered in the foyer. All watched Peel with unembarrassed stares. The skin on Peel’s neck prickled when he turned his back on them.

Within minutes, the Sikh returned and handed the parcel to Peel. An armored briefcase. No tampering showed on the lock, a good sign that no one had compromised it.

Taking the stairs three flights up to his darkened room, Peel entered quickly then locked the door behind him. He left the lights off except for the bed lamp, which was already on. Although the double bed was the most inviting sight of the last week, he still checked all the cupboards and the spaces behind doors, then behind the curtains before he closed them.

After guzzling the entire contents of two bottled waters from the bar fridge, he opened the case using the combination provided to him three days earlier.

He didn’t find the pistol he’d asked for. Everything else he had requested was in place. Three passports, each under different names and nationalities, matching vaccination papers, ten thousand US dollars in traveler’s checks, one hundred thousand rupees, VISA and American Express cards, and detailed maps of northern Pakistan and neighboring eastern Afghanistan.

A pistol’s hammer cocked. The weapon’s barrel pressed into the back of Peel’s head. Two simple actions told Peel in the worst possible way that he hadn’t covered his tracks thoroughly enough.

“Looking for this, Peel?” asked the silhouetted stranger.

Peel raised his hands. “You mean the handgun?”

“Yes. No surprise that I’ve already been through your briefcase?”

“You left the money?”

“I’m being paid well enough.”

Peel identified the accent as Eastern United States, and this troubled him. The assassin had to have connections within the NSA. Perhaps he even worked for them. Otherwise, there was no possibility he could have broken into the briefcase without damaging it. Peel would have noticed.

When he turned to examine the stranger, a fist punched him hard in the kidney. Pain needled through his right side and he went down.

“I didn’t say you could look at me.”

On his knees, Peel was thankful that he had not fallen further. The closer he was to the floor, the harder it would be to overcome his foe.

“I don’t think I need to,” Peel winced. “I know who you are. You’re Dirk Kinsella.”

The shadowy figure lifted Peel by his shirt collar, manhandled him expertly onto the bed’s lumpy mattress. He stood back just as quickly, weapon trained on Peel’s chest.

“Empty your pockets.”

Despite his pain, Peel did so. He had nothing of value except some loose rupees. His satellite telephone, stolen from the Taliban, was his only other possession. It already rested on the bedside table.

“Sit on your hands.”

Peel complied.

The assassin found a chair and sat. His 9mm automatic remained leveled at Peel’s heart. His face, now visible in the dim light, wore a sardonic grin. “You guessed right, Mr. Peel, the name is Dirk Kinsella. At least that’s one name I’m commonly known by.”

“So, you’re here to kill me?” Peel asked, not sure if he was ready for the answer to this question. He tried to ignore the swimming feeling in his head, of tiredness and exhaustion, even though he was again in mortal danger and adrenalin should have kept him alert.

“Most certainly. These days few people get to know me who don’t die shortly afterwards.”

“A contract?”

He nodded. “Nothing personal, if that is what you mean.”

“A killing is always personal to someone. Can you tell me who?”

Finally a laugh, as if Kinsella had been waiting to gloat from the onset. “I’m too much the professional to tell you that kind of information.”

Despite the assassin’s western clothes, they had a cheap local cut. Dyed black and tanned skin provided a resemblance to a Pakistani middle class business executive. Peel remembered where he had seen Kinsella before. Downstairs in the reception, not less than fifteen minutes earlier.

“However, Peel, I first have to make a telephone call. This client was very specific. He insisted that when I found you, I had to call him to confirm the termination order.”

“Is that so?”

“If he’s in a good mood, he might change his mind and you might even live through this night. But I don’t think so.”

During their exchange, Peel had wasted no time assessing the room. Unfortunately, there was nothing that he might use as a weapon or a means of escape. Kinsella had been thorough.

“Is that why I’m still alive, because your client is indecisive?”

“Yes... and...” Kinsella hesitated, uncertain for the first time.

“What?”

“And because I wanted to ask you something.”

“Ask me something?” said Peel, confused. “You’re the one holding the gun. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know what exactly happened to you, on the road to Afghanistan, three days ago.”

Peel snorted. “You sure? I don’t think you’ll believe me if I told you.”

“Oh, I think I will.”

Peel stared at Kinsella for a very long time, searched for any clues that the man was insincere in his request. He found none.

“So you know what it was in that other truck?”

Kinsella nodded.

“Okay then. I’ll tell you. For two days...”

_____

Two days without sight left Peel unprepared for the searing desert sunlight. When the back door of the truck unlatched and the canvas bag torn from his head, he couldn’t see at first, because it was too bright.

Men argued in what sounded to be Urdu. A cool breeze blew on his face. Distances felt vast.

He stilled himself when he heard the unmistakable sound of bullets being chambered into assault rifles. Instinctively he tugged against the thick rope about his wrists, but there was no give.

When his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw he was outside on a desolate road. The horizon was a flat empty landscape broken only by black mountain crags brushed white with snow. He guessed this was Afghanistan or somewhere near or in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, one of the most dangerous places on the planet for a Western spy to find himself.

He turned towards the arguing men. Three decrepit trucks decorated with faded Soviet Army insignia idled on the road. A dozen Taliban soldiers lingered, passengers of the trucks. They walked to stretch their legs. Each slung an AK-47 or M16.

Two of the Taliban pushed Peel forward, held him immobile as they presented him before their leader. That man’s eyes darkened as he squinted at the sight of Peel.

“Khaled Zakaria,” Peel spat blood from his battered mouth. “I should have guessed it was you. So, not a friend of Uncle Sam’s then?”

“You wanted me to show you the Taliban’s plan, Peel, well I keep my promises.” He laughed through rotten teeth. “I’m their plan.” His soldiers who understood English well enough laughed with him.

“The US Government doesn’t take kindly to being betrayed. You still have time to show me those WMD strongholds, and we can forget that this… misunderstanding, ever happened.”

“You’re not even an American, Peel. How does an Australian think he has any influence over the deceits and lies of the infidels from America?”

“My nationality doesn’t change who employees me, or why I’m here.”

The third truck shook violently, causing Peel to shudder. A squeal that sounded to have screamed from a thousand mouths. The truck rocked, rattled violently, as if a gigantic and invisible hand had just reached down from the sky and shook it.

The Taliban chambered rounds, stepped away from the vehicle. As the wailing lessened, Zakaria smiled. “As you say, a WMD is why we are here. I take it you still wish to get out of this alive?”

Peel flinched. The soldiers’ grip on his limbs tightened in response, threatened to dislocate a socket if he resisted further. Peel expected further torment, a weapon stock in the gut or another punch to the kidney, but the soldiers did not hit him. Earlier, while blindfolded and bound, bored soldiers had burned him with their cigarettes, savored his shudders and whimpers at the unexpected, random inflictions of pain. They had only burned his arms and chest, never his hands or face. That had to mean something, too.

“I’m waiting, Peel.”

“Of course I want to live.”

“That’s the problem with you Western infidels. No concept of the nobility of self-sacrifice in the name of God.”

Peel forced a laugh. “You want me to be a suicide bomber? You’re insane.”

Zakaria didn’t laugh, and Peel felt that this was exactly what the man wanted.

The wails from the third truck fell silent, so Zakaria thumped the side of the truck hard. Then the wails and the rocking started again. This time the sounds were distinct, a mixture of roaring, whistling and squelching noises resembling burps and farts.

Zakaria gave a new order in Urdu.

Two soldiers opened the rear of the second truck, the silent truck that no one had paid any attention to until now. From the darkness within stared a dozen or more tiny faces; dirty, confused, innocent and meek. Many children squinted at the sun as Peel had.

“Do you want me to kill one, Peel, so you know how serious I am?”

“No,” Peel cast his eyes downwards. “I believe you.”

“Good. So, I can trust you’ll do this for me?”

“It seems I have no choice.”

“That’s the idea.”

Taliban soldiers slammed the door to the second truck shut, trapping the children within. A few moaned. More whimpered, subjected again to the unending darkness that Peel had also endured.

Zakaria’s jagged fingers gripped Peel’s jaw, pulled their faces together so there would be no misunderstanding. “They are orphans, sons and daughters of infidels. They are nothing better than animals. I can either convert them to our righteous path, or execute them, but that choice I leave to you. You understand what I’m saying?”

“U-ha,” Peel grunted through his contorted face.

“Good.” Zakaria released his grip. “I’ll kill them all like goats in a slaughterhouse, if you don’t do exactly what I tell you to do.”

He gave more orders in Urdu. Peel was frog-marched by the two Taliban soldiers back to the third truck. It still rocked and shuddered of its own accord, as if the truck itself was the living organism. Whatever hid behind its reinforced metal doors now sensed Peel and his captors. To get closer, it battered its gargantuan weight against the containing metal. Thick translucent liquid exploded from tiny cracks in the rear doors.

Peel struggled, fought against the soldiers who held him immobile. He didn’t want to see what was inside.

“What is it?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

Two nervous soldiers sprung the latches.

The doors flung open with such force that one of them knocked a Taliban soldier to the ground, where he lay sprawled and unconscious. No one looked to the fallen man. All eyes turned to the maggoty-creature squashed into the truck, bound by a thousand chains as it thrashed and moaned to be free. Across its lumpy surface, short stubby tentacles whipped like a plate of worms, each tapered with circles of snapping teeth, hungry for something, anything to eat.

“What the hell is it?”

Zakaria grinned. “A suicide bomb.”

The Taliban commander took a grenade from an underling, pulled the pin and held it high so Peel would not miss its significance. He threw the grenade at the monster. It snatched it easily, its many tentacles fighting for it, before one salivating mouth swallowed it whole.

Peel ducked, for they were too close to the blast radius. He couldn’t flee, so he tensed every muscle against the explosion that would rip them into many strips of bruised meat.

No one was running. They were all going to die.

After the seconds passed, Peel realized he was the only one concerned that the grenade should have already detonated.

The Taliban leader cackled. “This ‘thing’ that you see before you, it’s already swallowed a thousand live grenades, and many more rockets, nails, ball-bearings, plastic explosives, ignited cans of petrol, and tons of noxious chemicals.”

“Thousands?” the words dribbled from Peel’s mouth.

“Of course.”

“You mean...?”

“Yes, Peel, it’s a bomb, waiting to go off.”

The soldiers forced Peel onto his knees, then further until his face pressed against the gravel road so he could see beneath the truck, and the several sticks of dynamite wired to the rear axle. Enough explosives to tear the truck, and presumable the thing, asunder.

“When we rupture the monster’s skin, all the explosives inside are no longer held in stasis, or that’s how the American General explains it.”

Peel tried to imagine the ensuing fireball that would mark the creature and his passage from the world. He couldn’t.

“We are near the Afghan border, near to a US military base. With your NSA connections, you can drive this truck into the middle of their lunchtime baseball match.”

“And if I don’t comply, you kill the children?”

“As you say in America, you catch on—”

Khaled Zakaria had no time to complete his sentence. Half his head shattered in a showery brilliance of crimson wetness. A second passed before Peel heard the gunshot that had taken Zakaria’s life. Three further shots and three more Taliban soldiers fell into equal stillness.

Peel wasted not a moment more. He elbowed the soldier whose grip on Peel’s right shoulder was not so tight anymore, breaking the man’s sternum. To his left the second soldier was raising his M16, but not before Peel looped his bound hands about the assailant’s neck and snapped it.

Meanwhile, four more soldiers had fallen due to the unseen sniper’s bullets. Peel could only presume that the assassin was a friendly to him, or more likely, leaving him until last because of his restricting bindings.

The first soldier Peel had sent to the ground still lived. That man raised his AK-47, so Peel dropped a knee into his throat, crushing it. Then Peel pulled the .45 revolver he spied in the foe’s cummerbund and put three bullets each into the chests of the two remaining standing soldiers.

It was all over within seconds.

Not forgetting the assassin, Peel rolled under the children’s truck and used the bloody mound of dead Taliban as cover. When he spied a fallen knife, he cut his bonds, not caring that he bloodied himself.

The satellite phone hanging off Zakaria’s belt rang loudly. Peel ignored it. The phone rang again and again. It continued for several minutes.

Eventually Peel accepted the call. “Yes?” he snapped.

Another bullet buried itself into Zakaria’s dead thigh, no less than ten centimeters from Peel’s head. “That’s an understanding, Peel,” an American spoke to him, “that I can kill you whenever I choose.”

“Who are you?” Peel yelled into the mouthpiece.

“You have five minutes to drive those children out of here.”

The line went dead.

Peel didn’t hesitate when he reached for an assault rifle, but another sniper bullet warned this was a bad idea. He clambered into the driver’s compartment of the children’s truck, flooded the ignition five times before it started. With the engine running, he turned in a tight circle until he faced towards Pakistan, and sped like a madman to freedom.

The assassin didn’t lie. Five minutes was all the time he gave before a volley of new bullets found the explosives under the monster’s truck.

An inferno the size of a football field lit the black desert like a miniature sun, and Peel no longer needed to imagine what that kind of death might be like.

_____

“That was you,” Peel spoke softly to the darkness when he finished his story. “The sniper?”

Kinsella was as much the professional tonight as he had been that day in the FATA desolation, not once wavering with the gun that pointed between Peel’s eyeballs. “It’s easy to work that one out.”

“It was you in Lagos too, wasn’t it? You assassinated your own man, Carter?”

Kinsella shrugged, “Maybe.”

“Why did you save my life, when you are going to kill me now?”

For the slightest moment the assassin’s eyes cast downwards, as if an unwanted emotion had forced itself to the surface of his consciousness. If it had, he smothered it again, held it deep inside where it could not touch him. “Only for the children, Peel, for the orphans whose lives you saved today.”

Outside, a tune with Arabic inflections, with rattles and drums, drifted from some distant apartment. Cars sped by. Abusive language exchanged between night commuters. The scent of diesel found its way inside Peel’s nostrils. He felt heightened, as if on drugs. He was noticing all external stimuli, because, he realized, these moments might soon be his last.

He looked into the unwavering stare of his foe. “I’ve been looking for you, Kinsella.”

The killer raised an eyebrow. “Is that right?”

“You’re a hard man to find. Extremely well hidden.”

The dark eyes wouldn’t look from Peel, and yet there was a hesitancy about their coldness. “In my line of work, if you can’t disappear completely when you need to, then you don’t stay in the game very long.”

“You knew what it was inside the truck, knew all about that monster torn from an alien dimension. You came after it, didn’t you? Not me or the Taliban, just it?”

“Is this twenty questions, Peel?”

Peel took a deep breath. “You haven’t killed me yet, so why not?”

“I told you, I have to make a phone call before we get to your death.”

Peel shifted his weight upon the bed. An action that caused Kinsella to stiffen, lengthen his gun arm menacingly. “Do that again, and I pop you anyway.”

Peel focused on stilling himself. “Kinsella, I bet you know how Khaled Zakaria gained possession of that monster. I’m thinking it was a mistake he got hold of it, right? And it was your job to fix that mistake?”

“You really want to know, Peel?”

He dared a nod. “I wouldn’t keep asking if I didn’t.”

“Well, I guess it is only fair that I tell you, since you told me your tale. It started with a meeting in a slaughterhouse...”

——

There would be no official record of the meeting in the slaughterhouse. Kinsella knew that long before he arrived. If anything went wrong, there was no one back at Command HQ to come in and clean up the mess.

He felt that the floor set the mood, a mixture of various animals’ blood, some dried and crusty, others still wet. The Pashtun militants they were here to see appeared nervous, although seasoned soldiers aligned with the US Forces against the Taliban and al Qaeda. They were eyeing off the Army Rangers on the opposite half of the killing floor on Kinsella’s side. Everyone present carried arms including knives, handguns, assault rifles, and a few with rocket launchers.

Kinsella observed from a shadow toward the back where few could see him. Unlike the Rangers, he was dressed in inconspicuous civilian clothes, light pants and shirt beneath a cotton jacket. A high-caliber handgun bulged under his jacket and a fighting knife rubbed against his skin in its leg sheath.

Four Army Rangers lowered a heavy crate onto the floor between the two parties. Before they could release it, the crate jumped in their grips, as if it contained a frightened, yet powerful, animal.

“Is this the promised weapon, General?” asked the FATA militant leader, Khaled Zakaria.

“Yes,” said the Pentagon official. “A new weapon, Mr. Zakaria, for use against our common enemies.”

A Ranger corporal took a crowbar to pry apart the nails in the crate. Immediately tiny white tendrils leaped free like a pit of snakes, snapped and snatched at the air with their tiny, circular mouths. The wooden panels removed, a body like a fat pulse wriggled, immobilized by several loops of thick metal chain.

Zakaria and his men recoiled from the thing.

One cried his faith to Allah.

Several of the Rangers, similar to the militants, betrayed their discomfort by stepping backwards.

Kinsella had seen similar alien anomalies before, and so didn’t flinch.

“In God’s name, what is that?”

“Something rather insignificant in the scheme of things, Mr. Zakaria.” The General laughed throatily. “But worthy of our needs.”

“You said it was a weapon.”

“Yes, you feed it explosives.”

“Very humorous. How do you detonate it?”

“I’m serious. The stomach of the creature exists outside the dimensions of space and time, outside of the universe we know and understand, in hyperspace. It could swallow an entire city’s worth of explosives, if we had the time and resources to feed it that much.”

“This is not what I expected.”

The General grinned. “We have a little facility back in the US that contains a hyperspatial wormhole leading to a breeding nest of these things, hundreds and thousands of the little fuckers. At this size they’ll give you a nasty bite, take a finger or two perhaps — if you get too close. Otherwise, until they grow, they’re harmless.”

From the webbing about his military fatigues, the General pulled a grenade and then its pin.

Suddenly there were guns raised everywhere.

Kinsella’s hand went to his pistol, ready to shoot FATA militants if they fired first, which they would. Then he noticed the General’s Army Rangers. They were obviously uncomfortable, but they did not move, or even appear to want to defuse the situation. They must know something he did not.

“Wait!” the General bellowed. “I can assure you no one will come to harm with my next demonstration.” He threw the grenade at the monster. It swallowed it quickly with a greedy, rapturous mouth that grew in size to accommodate the explosive device.

Rounds chambered. Knives drew. Men squealed.

“I told you to wait!” the General shouted, raising a cautioning finger. “The stomach doesn’t exist in this universe.” He counted down the seconds with his fingers. “Five... four... three... two... See the grenade will not go off.”

Eventually, realizing that no harm came to any of them, the militants lowered their weapons.

Kinsella reluctantly returned his weapon to its holster. The General had been reckless. Kinsella would never have provoked such a volatile response with a demonstration like that.

“What’s its purpose then? Why feed it explosives when its stomach is not even on God’s earth?”

“My dear Mr. Zakaria, when you rupture the creature’s flesh, that’s when all the explosives you’ve fed it become ‘uncontained.’ And believe me, its stomach is huge, bigger even than the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium.”

It took a moment before Zakaria was grinning too.

“General, I’m impressed. What do you want us to do with it?” He rubbed his sweaty palms together, gritted his teeth tightly. Kinsella couldn’t tell if he was anxious or excited, or both.

“This will be simple for you,” said the General. “You have knowledge of where the Taliban and al Qaeda strongholds are in the FATA region.” The General licked his lips. “I want you to deliver this WMD maggot, and many more like it to come, to our enemy’s strongholds. I want you to decimate every one of these terrorists, blow all the fuckers off the face of the earth.”

Zakaria’s smile became a large, crooked grin. “It will be our pleasure, General.”

_____

Peel felt defeated when Kinsella finished his story. He’d exhausted six months in Pakistan attempting to discover how the Taliban were sourcing an outer-world WMD. He hadn’t speculated for a moment that his US employers were behind the supply chain, nor had he imagined there were several uncontained weapons in their possession.

“Who is this General?”

Kinsella smiled. “He works for the Pentagon. That’s all you need to know.”

“Does he have a name?”

Kinsella shook his head. “That’s something I’m not going tell you.”

“He made a mistake.”

“Of course. He didn’t realize Zakaria was Taliban, with strong links to al Qaeda, or didn’t bother to research him deeply enough to uncover the truth.”

“Or didn’t care?”

Kinsella shrugged as if to say he agreed. “Were you told stories about the boogeyman, Peel, when you were a child?”

“Of course?” Peel frowned, not sure why there had been a sudden change in topics of discussion. “Why is that relevant?”

“My dad used to terrify me with such stories, of the boogeyman coming to get me in the night if I didn’t behave, to keep me in line, I think. My dad was a real bastard.”

“You want sympathy? I’m not your man, especially when you plan on murdering me.”

“I’m telling you a story, Peel, and since I hold the gun, shut up and listen. I used to wonder what scared the boogeyman? I wanted to know what that scary thing was, so I could befriend it, and scare away the boogeyman that scared me.”

“You’re taking about your father, I take it, scaring him away?”

Kinsella growled. “My point is: the Taliban and al Queda are like the boogeyman. They scare me. They scare you too or should after what they subjected you to this last week. By demonstrating that the US has WMD maggots, we hoped to scare them, make them think twice about warring with us if they understood how terrifyingly we could retaliate.”

“And?”

“We never scared them. They are monsters who only saw a mirror.”

“You’re the side bringing these creatures into our world. By doing so, you’re no better than them.”

“I disagree.”

“You said Zakaria had several of these WMD maggots. How many are we talking about?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Feeling the need to stand up and move, Peel shifted his weight, only to have the 9mm pressed against his temple.

“I warned you. Move and I shoot you.”

“You’re going to shoot me, anyway.”

“Not necessarily.”

Peel licked his lips, tasted the salt of his own sweat that wet his face. “You know I’ve been trying to find you for close to a year, Kinsella. Ever since I learned about you in Nigeria.”

“You said.”

“Ever wonder why?”

“To kill me?” he laughed. Both men appreciated that although Peel was a former soldier, he was not even remotely the same class of killer that Kinsella was, not as young and as agile.

“No. I was looking for you because I wanted your help.”

Although the rest of Kinsella remained very still, the assassin’s eyes blinked three times rapidly. “My help?”

“Yes, your help.”

“Why would you need my help? Why would you even think I’d even give it?”

Peel forced a smile. “Kinsella, you helped me save those orphans. That means you care about people other than just yourself. That’s a hell of a lot more than I can say about your masters.”

The assassin snorted. “You’ve overestimated me, Peel.”

“I disagree. I work for a secret department within the NSA,” he spoke quickly when he detected that Kinsella too had become agitated. “We scour the earth daily, putting down dimensional horrors like the WMD maggot, anywhere that they claw through and into our world hell-bent on destroying it. You know this secret world that I speak of. You live in its shadows every day, like I do.”

“So?”

“So, by what you’ve just told me, you know many of the bigger shadowy players by name. You can confirm a lot of what our department can only guess at. I implore you, terrify us with secrets we haven’t even begun to imagine.”

“You’re not serious!”

“I am. I’m here to recruit you as a member of our team.”

The man called Kinsella laughed again. “Don’t you get it, Peel? The so-called department you work for only exists as lip service to the actual powers in our government. Players who want to feel that through your group, they’re still doing something noble. Don’t you know that my boss is the boss of your boss?”

“What?” Peel shuddered.

“The General is with the Pentagon, Peel. I told you that.”

“Yes, but I thought he was operating on his own agenda out here, in secret.”

“Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t. But either way, whatever he does, the National Security Council will sanction him. The one the President is on.”

Peel felt as if ice had just flooded and chilled his heart. “Do you know which boogeyman you’re working for? I’d say it’s the scariest one of all.”

“Peel, as nice as our chat has been, it’s time to roll the dice.” Kinsella withdrew a cellular phone with his free hand, dialed a number. “Let’s see what my client has decided, now that I have you in my sight.”

Peel fell silent, waited expectantly until his own satellite phone rang, as he hoped it would. “You want me to get that?” he asked with a hint of smugness.

Kinsella frowned, then nodded. “Try nothing funny, Peel.”

When Peel answered, it was obvious who was on the end of each other’s line.

“So, you hired me to come after you?”

Feeling the first moment of relief since their encounter tonight, Peel nodded. “Like I said, finding you proved impossible. Getting you to come to me was the only way I knew we would ever meet.”

“But that satellite phone isn’t yours?”

“No. Since my escape, my boss back at the NSA’s Puzzle Palace arranged for my calls to redirect here.”

Kinsella stood, shuffled to the window to check the streets, the whole time his pistol pointed directly at Peel. “It’s a dangerous game you’re playing, hiring me to come after you. What if I kill you, anyway?”

Peel shrugged. “I’d be disappointed, naturally. My offer still stands, though, if you want a job with a bit more soul satisfaction.” Peel’s stomach churned. It had been a gamble he had played. His last chance. Perhaps he had overestimated Kinsella’s sense of nobility. “Are you going to kill me?”

The killer moved towards the room’s only exit, his body soon swallowed by the shadows. “My side pays better. My side has much, much better funding. Has more clout, and they know a hell of a lot more than you and your people could ever know.”

“What about an answer to my second question?” Peel could no longer see Kinsella in the darkness.

“Am I going to kill you?” Kinsella’s voice sounded from the next room. “No, I won’t. But not because of the trick you played to find me. And not because I may or may not respect you and what you stand for, however pointless your ideologies are. No, I’m only letting you live because of those children you saved. You deserve a life for that.”

Peel heard the main door unlatch, lock again, and then nothing.

He could have chased Kinsella, but he was dead tired. Besides, in that last shared moment, he’d felt certain that the two of them would meet again.

Alone at last, Peel fell upon his bed that looked incredibly inviting.

Sleep was only moments away.

The Eye of Infinity

The Sikorsky helicopter hit turbulence as it sped across the high-altitude San Agustin Plains, and so did Harrison Peel’s stomach. For one wild moment, he considered that the rotary blades could not keep them elevated in the thin air. Then the helicopter ascended, and all was well.

Their approach was low, so as not to interfere with twenty-seven parabolic dishes that formed the Very Large Array, radio telescopes that peered into the heavens twenty-four hours a day, three-hundred-and-sixty-five days per year. Black holes, distant galaxies, quasars and dark energy were their targets, and the very edge of the known universe itself, thirteen point seven billion light-years distant in time and some fifty billion light-years across space.

The evening’s first stars twinkled now that night was falling. Seeing this, Peel turned to his NSA colleague and friend seated opposite him in the rear of the cramped helicopter. “You ready for this, mate?” he shouted.

Dixon gave two thumbs up, smiled, then gave two thumbs down and frowned. “Not on your life, buddy. Every time I think I am, it’s something new and unexpected, and never good.”

Peel nodded. He felt the same way.

Minutes later, the helicopter settled upon the gravelly sand. Peel told the pilot to wait, that they wouldn’t be long. Feeling the cold, Peel pulled his beanie over his shaved head and tightened his hiker’s parka against the winter cold. Dixon buttoned his leather jacket over his alpaca sweater and held onto his Baltimore Orioles cap. They crouched low as they jogged under the whipping blades. Between them they carried two large black bags. One for evidence. One for the body.

Beyond the turbulence of the spinning helicopter blades waited a middle-aged woman, slightly plump with thick glasses, in a warm sweater. The vanishing sun painted her and the four-wheel drive she leaned across in reds and oranges. She hugged herself against the chill.

“You don’t look like the Sirocco Police?” she said when they were within earshot.

“That’s because we’re not.” Dixon gave her his best heartfelt smile. “I take it you are Lucia Ruiz?”

She nodded. “Are the police coming?”

“They’ve been told not to, ma’am. Considering what you told them, don’t you think its best we handle the situation?”

“And who exactly are you?”

Peel and Dixon could only stare at her. If they told her they were agents of the National Security Agency from a secret department that investigated alien anomalies like the one she had described, she would think of them as lunatics, but they would also drag her into a secret world which would ask more of her than she would be capable of giving.

“You won’t answer me? Oh, I get it. You’re secret agents, like James Bond.”

Peel pushed his fingers under his beanie and scratched his shaved head. “We work for the United States government. That’s all you need to know.”

“An Australian?” she said, detecting his accent. “Since when did our government employ Aussies as spooks?”

“Long story, but, rest assured, I have my green card.”

She crossed her arms, tried to step backwards, but bumped into the four-wheel drive that she had forgotten was behind her. Embarrassed, she flicked a loose strand of hair from her eyes. “Tell me. Which agency are you with?”

Both men were like stone. Neither had any intention of telling her the truth.

“Where’s the body you reported?” asked Peel.

“Um... Still where I found him... In the control room. Would you like to see?”

Dixon nodded. “That’s why we’re here, ma’am.”

Trembling, she pointed towards the four-wheel drive. “I couldn’t wait with it, you understand. I had to get away.”

Peel and Dixon looked to each other, silently acknowledging that this situation was probably as bad as they expected.

“Perfectly understandable,” said Peel, not unkindly. When Ruiz fumbled with the car keys, he gently took them from her pasty fingers. “Under the circumstances, don’t you think it best that one of us drive?”

Demurely, she nodded.

Peel clicked open the vehicle, threw the keys to Dixon and helped Ruiz into the front passenger seat. He realized she was in a state of shock, didn’t complain when he buckled her seat belt.

Dixon switched on the engine. The noise muffled against the idling helicopter. Peel slipped into the backseat. Dixon drove fast, churning dust behind them.

“Been with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory long, Lucia?” asked Dixon.

She nodded. “Ten years with the NRAO.”

“What do you do here?”

“Do? I’m an astrophysicist.” She seemed to relax marginally when a topic of familiar conversation was on offer. “Normally most of the work occurs in the universities, but it’s nice to get out here now and then, and see the radio telescopes go to work for us. I’m studying the micro-quasar Cygnus X-3.”

“Ah, a black hole,” said Peel, “a gateway to another universe.”

“Well, that’s a theory.”

Peel saw her scrutinizing him through the rear-view mirror. He smiled for her benefit. With the number of wormholes he had transgressed to alien worlds and bizarre dimensions, it wasn’t a theory for him.

After they’d driven a couple of minutes along a dirt track, it was dark. A crisp, cloudless night revealed the brilliant Milky Way overhead.

Ruiz directed them to a concrete building where she said they would find the Array’s databanks. “He’s in there,” she pointed when Dixon stopped the vehicle. Her hand shook. “You know, with his... face, I’m not even sure he was dead. But he has to be, doesn’t he?”

Dixon smiled. This was his attempt to put Ruiz at ease. “Let’s look, shall we?”

With leaden legs, she led the men inside. “You know I called the Sirocco Police four hours ago?”

“We had a long way to travel, Lucia.” Dixon’s arm was now supporting her elbow, gently leading her inside. Behind his companions, Peel readied his Glock 9mm handgun. He didn’t want to go inside, either. But it was their job, and so it was best to prepare. Not that a handgun often did much against alien intrusions.

Once inside, Peel noticed the shadows that created curled shapes and dark corners in the dim night lights. Green exit signs were the only color casting a pale illumination upon rumbling servers, powered-down monitors, and flashing routers.

After a moment spent scanning the room, Peel finally saw the splattered blood. It looked black in the low light, like spilled oil. Recognizing that there was no immediate danger, Peel slipped on a pair of latex gloves as he crouched beside the dead man. He turned the face for a better angle and shuddered. Seeing the horror, Dixon too had become ashen faced. Lucia Ruiz let out a gasp.

Peel forced himself to hold his stare. The dead man’s face was a muddle of black, marble eyes of varying sizes lost in a sea of rippled flesh dissected by a dozen mouths cut with serrated teeth. Each mouth was open, bloated with a coarse barbed tongue. Worm-like tentacles had sprouted elsewhere, reaching lengths of up to a dozen centimeters. Peel kept expecting them to twitch or curl.

The disfigurement made him queasy, not because it was monstrous, but because it suggested a natural order of things and that humans were wrong. The alien growth had not attached itself to the dead man’s face, but had grown out of it, and it looked... expectant.

“Who is he? Was he?” Dixon asked from a corner he had pushed himself into. He distracted himself from the macabre spectacle by scouring the room for secondary clues. A cupped hand stayed near his mouth, ready if his gut betrayed him.

“Scott Cavanaugh,” Lucia spoke in a monotone. The creature transfixed them all. “He’s... was... working on a classified assignment. Some project for NASA. He flew in a couple of weeks ago from the Llano de Chajnantor Observatory, in Chile.”

“What was he looking at,” asked Peel, gagging. “I mean, through the radio telescopes?”

Lucia shrugged. “All he would say was, ‘the center of the universe’.”

“Sounds ominous,” Dixon forced a smile, tried to be engaging again, but failed completely because he wasn’t coping with the presence of the corpse. “Where are Cavanaugh’s things?”

In a daze, Ruiz broke eye contact and led Dixon to the dead man’s workstation. Dixon wasted no time collecting Cavanaugh’s possessions in the smaller of their two black bags, and suddenly he was all business again. Ruiz told Dixon which computer belonged to the dead man. Dixon rushed as he pried the casing and removed the hard drive.

“Ma’am, don’t touch any files on the servers that belong to him. Our people will recover them shortly, if they haven’t, already.”

Peel remained at the corpse’s side, for he couldn’t look away. He should undertake a more thorough examination, but he didn’t have the courage to do so. Then he glanced again at the man’s slit wrists, the source of all the blood.

Peel stood quickly and shuddered. The transformation into a monster had not caused the man’s death.

He looked to the NRAO scientist. “Lucia, we’ll also need Cavanaugh’s personnel records. All the data he was working on.”

“Even the classified stuff?”

“Especially the classified stuff.”

“Anything else?” She looked like she wanted to ask more. She held a hand in front of her, blocking Cavanaugh’s face from her view.

“Just the body.” Peel took three long breaths to calm his nerves, then unzipped the second black bag. Its size was perfect for a human corpse. “And your silence. I’m assuming you’ve told no one, other than the police, what you saw?”

“Fred DuFresne.”

“Who?”

“I told Fred DuFresne. He’s studying the Triangulum Emission Nebula... NGC 604.” To occupy her hands, she played with her hair. “Understand, I needed to tell somebody. But when Fred saw Scott, he took it worse than me. He had to go home and take two sleeping tablets.”

He might have even taken twenty, mused Peel.

“Can you trust Fred,” Dixon asked, “to keep his mouth shut?”

She nodded. “I doubt he believes it himself. Or will believe it, in the morning.”

“Good,” Peel stood between her and the corpse. He smiled to remind her she could face horror with courage and good will. “Thanks for your help, Lucia. Mind if we borrow your car again?”

“No,” she mumbled, not looking at him, but through him. “Not at all.”

When Peel had maneuvered the body into the bag, he and Dixon lifted it and raced outside.

“Do you know what killed him?” Ruiz called with a crack in her voice, following them.

“Slit his wrists,” responded Peel. “Suicide.”

It wasn’t the answer she wanted, not the comfort she sought, but it was the best he could offer.

“I mean, do you know what happened to his face?”

Outside, under the brilliant Milky Way, unceremoniously and without sympathy for the dead, Peel and Dixon threw the wrapped body into the back of her vehicle. It landed with a hard thud. For a long time, Peel watched it, half expecting the corpse to sit up and ask them, with its dozen mouths, why they had woken it.

Dixon climbed in behind the wheel. Peel followed, until he considered it would be prudent for some final, brief words.

“Lucia, in case anyone asks, Cavanaugh finished his research here yesterday, packed his belongings and then flew back to Chile. Is that clear?”

At first, she said nothing. Then she nodded slowly. It worried Peel that she might slip into deeper shock. He wanted to give her closure, but to tell her the truth would only send her into a deeper state of despair. Peel had been to that dark place himself, too many times to remember. He wished sometimes that someone like him in this situation today, had discouraged him from delving deeper into the maddening truth. He might be a happier soul today, if they had.

“And no, Lucia Ruiz, we don’t know what happened to his face. Not at this stage. Perhaps never...”

“But if you find out?”

“I won’t be in contact to tell you, if that’s what you mean. We’ll never meet again.”

He walked fast, and still he had not said enough. He turned to her again, rubbed her arm to offer comfort. “This is over for you, Lucia. Go home, do what you need to, and then forget it ever happened.”

She burst into tears.

He opened his mouth to say more, but couldn’t. He felt uncomfortable when people cried. It was too much vulnerability for him to cope with.

Leaving Ruiz to her tears, he climbed in beside Dixon. And then they vanished into a night of shadows and spooks, to return to the strange and frightening world in which they resided.

_____

Peel had laughed. That first day they had asked him to attend a secret meeting at the National Security Agency headquarters, in Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. He laughed because the exit sign leading off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway said ‘NSA Employees Only’, stark and officious. In Australia, there was nothing as grand as a highway exit for an entire government building.

Perhaps it was this country’s grandness that had brought Peel to the United States, to consult on a full-time basis on the bizarre and unexplained. There was no similar agency in Australia that could match the intelligence and technological resources that the NSA possessed, and if there were, none would accept him. A checkered history had made sure of that. But they were all part of the Code-89 group, same as they were all part of Five Eyes - operators like him who worked cooperatively with English-speaking powers to keep the cosmic horrors at bay.

At the conclusion of the long ‘Employees Only’ drive, the composite buildings of the NSA loomed huge like Lego blocks for giants. Some were black glass, others of gray concrete. Encircling the buildings was a sea of car parks dense with sedans, RVs and four-wheel drives shaming the world’s largest shopping malls. It had been hot on his first day, when Peel laughed. Eight months had since passed. He had spent much of that time in Afghanistan and Pakistan, hunting alien anomalies used as weapons by the local insurgents. Now he was back in America permanently, or as permanent as it was possible to be in his profession, and just in time for Christmas. It had become cold in his absence, and a light snow was falling.

With a name badge that identified him as a security-cleared consultant, Peel pulled into a free parking spot, clicked his sedan locked and marched inside.

He had taken to wearing a business suit whenever he was in the office. Not tie, because that would suggest conformity with the establishment. In his tight grip was a laptop in a carry bag. Its pockets included, amongst other unusual paraphernalia, a spare magazine for his Glock 9mm automatic. He’d had to check the ammunition and his weapon, holstered under his jacket, with Internal Security when he passed through the front gate. Otherwise, Peel made it a habit to carry a handgun everywhere. It slept under his pillow when he did.

Inside, the warmth of round-the-clock air-conditioning greeted him like a friend. He found the stairs rather than the elevator and walked down them.

Peel’s new employers were a secret even within the NSA. Naturally enough, they were in a basement, so the NSA’s other hundred-thousand employees could not estimate their exact numbers. Investigation of alien intrusion and the intelligence gathering on extra-terrestrial activities anywhere they occurred across the planet was a dirty business the Puzzle Palace was ill at ease with, because almost everyone who worked here was a computer or surveillance jockey. A team of crack covert agents operating in secret in their midst made that discomfort twice as hard to bear. His department should have been under the management structure of the CIA, who were used to running field operations, but it had been the NSA who was the first to crack the languages of alien species, and so his department had grown naturally from there.

This was a covert world where every second US senator understood that the wheels of government had dealt with hostile alien intrusions since Prohibition. Similarly, expanded intelligence and military budgets, and the growing restrictions to civil rights, were not just attempts to counter global terrorism.

Their biggest find was generations ago, with an alien city buried under rock and ice in Antarctica. That city remained occupied from one billion to approximately fifty million years ago. The highly classified aliens, dubbed Pentapods and now believed extinct, were not originally of this Earth, but were an interstellar species that arrived after eons colonizing many other worlds across the universe. Their technology was vastly superior to anything humans possessed, and most of it was unknowable. Of course, the US government, who today controlled the alien city with a strong military force, were doing their best to reverse engineer as much of the unearthed tech as possible. The secret NSA department played a big part in the study of Pentapod technology. They’d had successes, but many more failures.

Peel couldn’t even guess how many field operatives, analysts and support staff actually worked for this department. He had only met a few dozen, but there would be many, many more. He’d witnessed firsthand their secret underground installation in Utah and seen their extensive operations in Antarctica, but only when they thought he was about to die of radiation poisoning, before the freaky properties of an alien wormhole reversed all that. With a clean bill of health, the NSA had given him a job, but that didn’t mean his security check would be complete soon, or that they would ever tell him everything. He was an Australian, after all. A friendly foreigner, but a foreigner.

The office Peel worked from was like the outermost layer of an onion, and that was as far as he had penetrated. He could see the locked doors he could not access. Sometimes people would go into them and disappear for long periods. Occasionally, an operative would exit after a few hours — or weeks — and say nothing as they exited, not even acknowledging Peel when he tried to say hello.

Today he was in a morose mood, so he didn’t look at anyone. He found his tidy desk, exactly as he had left it two nights before. Seated, he connected his laptop to the inner sanctum network and logged on. The prompt screens demanded eight passwords and a thumb print just to access the server.

Jack Dixon’s neighboring desk featured coffee rings and fluttering piles of paper. He wasn’t ex-military, so no one had drilled into him the discipline of order and neat presentation. Dixon had access to doors Peel did not, and he never talked about what was on the other side.

“Morning, Harrison.” The former southern Illinois cop-turned-spook held two hot, machine-brewed coffees in his hand, one for Peel. Dixon, too, wore a suit, and Peel grimaced that business attire sat better on the American. “How did you hold up after last night?”

“I’ve been better, but then again, I’ve also felt far worse.”

“I bet you have.”

After their encounter in New Mexico, they had taken an overnight military flight back to Washington, DC via Houston. They would have been lucky to have six hours of sleep between them. Peel had only relaxed when they reached Texas. There, they had signed paperwork allowing them to hand over the body and the NRAO computer files to an unnamed NSA superior waiting for them.

“Well, drink your coffee then, wake yourself up. Plenary wants to see us both immediately.”

“He would, wouldn’t he?” Peel followed Dixon from the room.

Joss Plenary was a large man who always looked uncomfortable in the tight jackets his wife insisted on buying him, as if they were both in denial that he had a weight problem. His tiny office chair didn’t look like it belonged to him either, as he barely squeezed into it.

“Dixon, Peel, sit down.”

Peel did so, sipped at his brown sludge and immediately wished for a proper coffee brewed by a person, and not a machine. Coffee was his only vice, and Plenary’s meetings could last for hours.

“How was New Mexico?”

Dixon shifted in his seat like he wanted to escape it. “It was something new. Something we haven’t seen before.”

“You read my initial report?” Peel had typed it up on the flight back, encrypted it, and emailed it from Houston. He’d slept on the second leg home.

Plenary nodded, grinned while his eyes held a warning. “I’m afraid I have some bad news. Not two minutes ago, I received a call that someone murdered Lucia Ruiz.”

“Murdered?” both men said in unison.

“Crushed to death—”

“Car accident?” Dixon asked.

“—in her apartment. The perp touched nothing else.”

Peel felt queasy, for this sounded like a near impossible method of murder for a human to accomplish. “What about Fred DuFresne?”

“Who is he?”

“A scientist who worked with Ruiz, I mentioned him in passing in my report. He knew about the alien mutation, too.”

“I’ll get it checked out.” Plenary made a call. Thirty seconds later, he said, “I’ll get an answer shortly after they send a police officer round to investigate. It gets worse, though. Scott Cavanaugh’s corpse vanished shortly after you signed him over in Houston.”

Peel felt hot with frustration. “What’s going on, Joss?”

Plenary shrugged, bunching his suit. “I’m trying to find out. Whoever’s behind this, they’ve got nerve, and they’ve got connections, if they’ve left no trail we can follow.”

“What do we know, boss?” Dixon asked with a conciliatory tone, for the conversation had become heated with no one to vent at.

“I’ve learned a fair bit about Scott Cavanaugh in the last twenty-four hours. He was working on a highly classified NASA project, called INFINITE EYE. The particular type of project our division normally gets involved with.”

Peel shrugged. He’d heard of INFINITE EYE but knew nothing about it, but then he didn’t expect to. There were so many covert projects associated with what the NSA liked to call Code-89 anomalies: alien invaders from other dimensions that also included the Pentapods.

“How classified?”

“The very top.”

“Code-89?”

Plenary nodded. “And higher. I’ve made sure you’re both cleared for briefing, but...”

“But what?”

“Whatever was on Cavanaugh’s hard drive and on the server, someone in NASA with the right Code-89 clearance requisitioned and recovered all the evidence you collected before we even had time to look at it.”

“You think it was the same perpetrator who murdered Ruiz?” Peel asked.

“No, I don’t. I know who took the information: Cavanaugh’s boss.” Plenary poked his tongue into his cheek, leaned across the table to make a point. “A man by the name of Dr. Martin Ridley should be able to shed some light on this murky situation. It seems Cavanaugh was not the first man inflicted with ‘Multiple Eye Syndrome’.” Plenary made quotation marks with his fingers. “Ridley reports they’ve had eight such ‘infections’ in the last three weeks.”

“He’s got the bodies?” Peel asked.

“The man was cagey about that, and more worried over what you two might have seen on Cavanaugh’s electronic files. Did you see anything?”

Both men shook their heads.

Dixon said, “Not enough time for more than the briefest glance, boss.”

“Ridley says he’ll cooperate with our investigation, in the spirit that we’re all fighting the same menace, et cetera.” He waved his arms in the air like cartwheels.

“Gracious of him,” muttered Peel.

Dixon blew on his coffee. “Can we take it as gospel that all the MES victims worked on Project INFINITE EYE?”

The nod was slight, but it was enough.

“Eggheads looking at something they shouldn’t?”

Plenary remained silent.

Dixon froze, forgot that he had been about to take a sip from his paper cup. “I take it I’m correct in that second assumption and not just making a joke?”

Plenary nodded. “Six of the inflicted, including Cavanaugh, committed suicide before anyone got to them. One is in a coma, and one... one was babbling about what he saw. Something about ‘paradoxical uncollapsed field potential’ is all I got out of Ridley. What that man saw, he said, changed him... He’s completely mad, or was, until last night, when he vanished.”

Dixon frowned. “Vanished?”

Peel fought the urge to stand and pace. Someone with a lot of pull was doing a terrific job at hiding the truth. If he and Dixon had arrived in New Mexico only an hour later, then perhaps they too would now be dead.

“Yes, Jack. Ridley doesn’t know how it happened, or he’s not saying. When I called him back, he tried to backtrack, said I’d misunderstood.”

Dixon said, “Someone is trying to cover this up?”

“His behavior was suggestive that he’s getting pressure from above, to resolve this one internally.”

Something about the whole situation troubled Peel, but he could not yet grasp what that troubling point was, so he asked, “I take it, it’s best not to expect much real cooperation.”

“Probably not. But they have to cooperate, they know we have jurisdiction.”

“Wait a second,” Peel raised an eyebrow, finally realizing what was bugging him. “You mean that this infliction is not fatal?” He remembered Cavanaugh’s corpse. What revolted him the most were the slit wrists.

In his time, Peel had witnessed his share of alien mutations in men and women, and none were ever pleasant. But a physical mutation of this magnitude that kept the victim’s mind alive and ‘human’, he’d encountered nothing like it before.

“Yes. Someone, or something, is trying to ‘evolve’ our species.”

Peel and Dixon both grimaced. No one in their right mind would want to evolve into the monstrosity they bagged in New Mexico.

“Spill it, Joss,” demanded Peel. “What is INFINTE EYE? Give us the worst of it.”

“The Operations Executive of INFINITE EYE, Martin Ridley, will brief you in Cape Canaveral, tomorrow afternoon. That’s all I can say right now. You know how it goes, information only when it’s required, and all that.”

“But you think he’s holding back?”

“I think someone above him is covering up. Ridley might have overstepped his mandate on all this, so don’t expect him to be helpful.”

“Well, that’s worth knowing.”

“I’m running late for another meeting.” Plenary gestured towards the door.

A short meeting after all, Peel still had time to purchase a proper coffee before he made an attack on his unopened emails. A coffee would help him absorb everything he had learned these last twenty-four hours. “Well, we better pack again.”

“‘We’, Peel? I’m sending only you. Dixon has another pressing case, in New York.”

“Limited resources?” Peel quipped. He didn’t mean to sound so sarcastic as his eyes drifted to one door, seen through the glass windows of Plenary’s office, that Peel had yet to gain access to.

“We always have limited resources in agents with Code-89 experience, so I can’t afford to have any of you working together, anymore.”

Peel felt his stomach knot. Together, he and Dixon had experienced horrors far worse than in New Mexico, but this case smacked of more of the same. Alien monsters out there, somewhere, waiting to snack on them. Dixon and Peel relied on each other to watch each other’s backs at all times. Neither would be alive now, if they’d failed in this one simple task. This time, he would have to go it alone. Not a comforting thought in the slightest.

“Well, I better pack, then.” Or not unpack, he should have said, remembering that he’d come straight from the military airfield to the office.

Yet Dixon seemed nonplussed, even jealous. “Look on the bright side, Harrison. You might even get lucky, and score yourself a trip on the Space Shuttle.”

_____

Snow had fallen overnight in Arlington, so Peel and his partner, Nicola Mulvany, stayed indoors to run on treadmills rather than the streets, until they surged with endorphins.

After stretching, Peel showered and dressed, made a breakfast of coffee, muesli and fruit for two. Nicola joined him after her shower. She wore one of his business shirts. In her hands she held a freshly brewed coffee like they were the perfect loving couple.

“So Harrison, still can’t tell me where you’re off to?”

“Sorry,” he kissed her on her ear. “You know how it is.”

She sighed, cast her eyes downwards. “How long you going away for, then? Can you at least tell me that?”

He could only shrug.

“This is worse than being married to a Special Forces soldier, or an Alaskan pipeline engineer.”

Peel didn’t know what to say. They weren’t married. They always avoided that topic. Every time someone mentioned the word ‘marriage’, it led an argument about who wanted what, and how they were in conflict on this issue.

“You know that I worry about you every day, with this job of yours?”

He smiled weakly. He didn’t want to hide his feelings from her again, but that was exactly what he was about to do. “I’m glad that you worry, Nicola, but you don’t need to, this time. This is just a routine field trip.”

Nicola scoffed, walked away to sit on their lounge. “It’s the lying, that hurts the most.”

“There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“You could quit?” She had, and that was the horrible truth about their profession. Nicola was FBI, and was Code-89 cleared, but after Peel almost died in Sydney, she had quit and went back to investigating regular homicides. Peel didn’t know how she could do it, but she had, and she wanted him to do the same.

Peel scooped yogurt into both cereal bowls, sat next to her while they picked at their food, their appetites forgotten.

“Alternatively, you need excellent agents,” she said over the lip of her coffee mug. “You keep telling me you do. I could come back, join you in the NSA.”

Peel took a bite of his muesli so he wouldn’t have to answer her.

“I’ve been thinking about it. Normal homicide is boring. You’re right, you can’t go back after you’ve seen what we’ve seen. Let me join your team. At least then we can share what you get up to. And don’t give me any shit about how dangerous the job is. Remember, I’ve seen beyond the veil too, in Nevada, and the King in Yellow. It was how we met, or have you forgotten?”

“It’s too dangerous.”

Nicola held her breath, and her face became red. Peel had never seen her so angry. “So it’s okay for you to risk your life every day, but not for me?”

He nodded, acknowledging the hypocrisy of his rationale. He loved Nicola, and he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. But after so many traumatic experiences battling against higher-dimensional intrusions as an Australian Army officer, as a mercenary and now as an NSA consultant, he knew in his heart that eventually one of those intrusions would beat him. He would fall, like so many colleagues who had fallen at his side in the past, or worse, become something like Scott Cavanaugh. He didn’t want Nicola to get hurt when it happened.

Peel was not a man who could afford the luxury of marriage. He could not be a husband, let alone a father. He should let her go. And he would have already, if he didn’t miss her terribly every day they were apart.

Tenderly, she touched his arm. “Look, I know what keeps you awake at night. It keeps me awake too. Once you see ‘something indescribable’ tear through the higher dimensions and nearly destroy the world... well, there’s no going back, is there? But that doesn’t mean you and I can’t have a life together.”

He put his hand over hers. “No. You are so right.”

“I am, and you’ve got two choices. You need to decide which choice you’re going to commit to by the time you return from this assignment... If you get back.”

Peel raised an eyebrow. “And they are?”

“You either quit this job, and we get married and start a family...”

“Or...?”

“We work together, and I’ll come back into the Code-89 Brotherhood, or Sisterhood, or whatever they call it. If you’re going to die horribly soon, I want to be there with you.”

Peel gazed out the window. He should not have become emotionally involved with Nicola. He lay awake most nights because he couldn’t imagine a life together, and he couldn’t imagine being apart. But in his heart, he knew her demand was more than reasonable.

“Okay, honey, it’s a deal. When I return, you’ll get your answer.”

_____

Florida was a climate turned upside down, balmy and tropical. This was Peel’s first venture to America’s Deep South. He welcomed the perfect beach conditions, not that he was here for the sun and the sand.

Martin Ridley met Peel at the gate. The Southerner was a robust man in a polo shirt and slacks. As he led Peel from Orlando Airport he joked about Peel’s Australian accent, asked him if the crocodiles in his country really were bigger than the alligators in Florida. Once Peel had answered his question as noncommittally as he could, they headed for Ridley’s RV.

“I’ve got some leave owed to me,” Ridley offered as an explanation to his earlier questioning. “Leave approved for next month, and my wife and I want to go somewhere exotic.”

Peel could see the direction this conversation was taking, so he obliged. “You should go to Australia.”

“Anywhere in particular? When I Googled the Land Down Under, I didn’t realize how big your country was.”

“Far North Queensland is nice. You can see the Great Barrier Reef, relax in some great resorts, or go trekking in the rainforests, if that’s your thing.”

A grin grew large across Ridley’s mouth. “My wife likes that kind of thing. I like golf.”

“Aussies play golf everywhere.”

He thought about what Peel had said for a moment. “I’ll mention it to Louise. She’s always wanted to go ‘down under’.” He laughed.

In the car park, a journalist and her cameraperson surprised Peel and Ridley waiting for them by what Peel presumed was Ridley’s RV. The journalist was pretty, stick-thin and overly made-up like all television reporters, perfectly matched to her expensive suit and glam. Her companion wore a bush vest and cargo pants, and lumbered with what must have been twenty kilograms of audiovisual equipment.

The journalist pushed a microphone into the NASA man’s face. “Mr. Ridley, Lisa Knight of CNA, Capital News America. What can you tell us about the Eye of Infinity Project?”

“How the hell did you find out about that?”

The journalist raised an eyebrow. Ridley had just confirmed the project’s existence. “The American public has the right to know. Is there any truth to the rumors that our government is spending six trillion taxpayer dollars on a new space program to reach neighboring star systems, like Gliese 581g?”

“No.”

“Then is there any truth to the rumor that you have been liaising with the British government, which allegedly has a similar program underway?”

The camera man caught Peel’s intense stare in his lens.

“Record me with that, mate,” countered Peel, “and you’ll never see that footage or camera again.”

“What are you, a spook?” The man continued to film.

Peel wasted no time snatching the camera. The cameraman protested, but Peel ignored him as he claimed the digital tape.

“Hey, touch me and I’ll sue you, buddy!”

Peel acted like the cameraman didn’t exist. He was in no mood to argue.

Ridley stepped forward, impressed by Peel’s aggressive response to this intrusion. “And you, buddy,” he said to the flustered cameraman, “will be detained under the Patriot Act if you don’t back off right now!”

Peel crushed the digital tape underfoot, giving an air of finality to the proceedings. Lisa and her cameraman could only stare with disbelief. “You know we could sue you for that?” she said.

“Try it,” Peel countered. The two men climbed inside Ridley’s RV, then sped from the car park.

“I’m sorry about that, Mr. Peel. It doesn’t happen very often, but it happens.”

“What will happen to them now?” He’d already presumed government officials would detain the two journalists and question them, then be forced to sign non-disclosure statements binding them to legal and criminal prosecution if they ever talked.

“I don’t know how they found out about INFINITE EYE. We need to keep this project under wraps, at all costs, so they’ll go through the wringer. You know, several days of intense interrogation in case they really know something about what goes on here. But I doubt they know anything worthwhile. We’ll release them, eventually.”

While Ridley drove fast along the highways, Peel stared at the wide roads and palm lined avenues, and remembered that he was a man accustomed to warm climates. His thoughts returned to Nicola and how it would be nice to retire here. A thought he quickly dismissed.

When they entered the Kennedy Center, he hadn’t expected to feel impressed by Launch Complex 39, but he was. Built during the Saturn Moon Rocket Program of the 1960s and 1970s, it loomed with the grandeur of Sydney Harbour Bridge. Ridley told him they decorated the building with the world’s largest United States flag. For Peel, the Space Shuttle on its launch pad, primed and ready for lift-off, was a greater sight. As the shadow of its nose and detachable fuel tanks passed over them, Dixon’s words came back to Peel, about venturing into outer space. Seeing the magnificent spacecraft, Peel felt sad that the Shuttle Program had been canceled.

“We chose the Kennedy site for its proximity to the equator, Mr. Peel. We use the Earth’s centrifugal force to our advantage, to sling-shot — in part — our rockets into space. And we launch eastwards for the same reason, to take advantage of the Earth’s rotation.”

“And here I was thinking the primary reason for eastwards was to minimize ground accidents. Like the debris from the Challenger which fell into the Atlantic Ocean?”

Ridley cleared his throat. “Despite what our politicians would have the world believe, we do plan for catastrophes, and how to minimize them.”

“Just call me Harrison.”

“Sure, Harrison.”

“I’ll just call you Martin then, shall I?”

“Last names and titles, it’s all very nineteen-fifties, isn’t it?”

“Agreed. Besides, I thought I was here to talk about INFINITE EYE, and the employee that supposedly killed himself two days ago. I’m also here to ask you why you snatched back Cavanaugh’s hard drive.”

The portly NASA official paused before he said, “You’ll thank me one day, for saving your life?”

“Is that right?”

“It’s very right. This is a situation you couldn’t possibly comprehend.”

Peel chuckled to himself. This wasn’t the first time such a rationale was used to stonewall his investigative pursuits. “That may be, but I’m still here on a fact-finding mission. Who do you think might murder two scientists at the NRAO and snatch away Cavanaugh’s body?”

“Let’s not talk about it here, Mr. Peel, please?” Friendly naming conventions already forgotten; his eyes motioned skyward. “Satellites, friendly or otherwise, can pick up many things these days. Wait until we’re inside.”

Once they were deep within the NASA complex, Ridley stopped outside a small bunker-shaped structure half buried in a vast concrete field. The sign on the door claimed that it stocked weed-killer. It seemed to Peel that wherever he went, secret facilities for the study and containment of Code-89 threats followed the same design the world over. On the surface they were small and discrete, and yet they held so much more than the eye could see.

Beyond the door, Air Force guards greeted the two men with steel glares. An elevator was the only path forward, and it could only descend.

“So,” Peel asked as they clambered into the lift, “what’s INFINITE EYE?”

“You ever been into outer space, Harrison?”

“No!” Peel lied. He had traveled by wormholes through the fabric of space-time, to other worlds and universes, to places he wished he’d never seen. But that was all classified. Not an experience he had clearance to discuss with anyone, especially not within NASA, of all places.

The lift began its descent. The temperature dropped with their decreasing elevation. “Well, today’s your lucky day, then. It’s easier if we show you, rather than try to explain. But before we do, you’ll need a guide, and a suit.”

_____

It took Peel forty minutes to force his muscular physique into the elastic body stocking, the inner-layer of his clunky space suit. Its texture clung uncomfortably to his skin, like a rubber wetsuit. Afterwards there were four more layers to don, including the liquid cooling suit and the outer thermal micrometeoroid garment. Childhood pondering upon the adventures of astronauts had never imagined this.

Dressing with him was his cheerful NASA guide, Larry Brandon. Assigned by Ridley to accompany Peel on their journey, the twenty-something man took a mere six minutes to fit his suit.

“You’ll be thankful later.” The guide brushed his shoulder length sandy hair behind his ears and tied it into a ponytail, before donning his head cap. His mannerisms and rugged appearance reminded Peel of a mountaineer. “The last thing you’ll want to be doing is working against pressure changes inside your suit when you move your body around. Believe me: that’s much harder work than getting into these tight suits now.”

“So I am going into deep space?”

Brandon smiled.

“Well then, don’t tell me, Larry. I’ll just continue on with my assumption that everything is ‘need-to-know.’”

“Let’s just say the surprise is more fun than the upfront explanation.”

“That’s what your boss said.”

The following layers proved easier to fit, designed to slip one over the other. When fully encased, Peel felt stiff and awkward. His head trapped in the bubble-shaped helmet, oxygen tanks strapped on his back like an anchor, Peel had just increased his weight by twenty kilograms or more. Just like the cameraman.

Comparing himself to Brandon, they appeared far less bulky than the astronauts he’d seen on CNA and the other networks during televised space walks. Instead, they resembled armored stick insects, ready for battle.

“We’re not going into space the conventional way, strapped inside a rocket, are we?”

“You betcha we’re not. We’re not even going into outer space, rather we’ll bypass it.”

Once the NASA guide felt satisfied that Peel had fitted his suit properly, they set off. Not outside toward any rockets primed on the launch pads, but underground, into deeper chambers beneath the fake pesticide bunker. Their next portal was at an airlock large enough to drive a truck through. Painted in stark black and yellow danger stripes, a label said ‘Restricted: Unauthorized Personnel Will Be Shot On Sight.’

“Remember Harry, thermal radiation leaking from your suit is lost very slowly in a vacuum, so normally you won’t get cold.” Brandon checked their suits again while a second post of Air Force guards scrutinized their passes and possessions. “But you will lose body heat quickly by conduction through objects you touch, or to a lesser extent where there is atmosphere.”

“Moral of the story; touch nothing unless I have to.”

Brandon gave Peel two thumbs up. “Your hands and feet have heavy insulation, so it won’t be much of a problem, but if we get stuck out there too long... Well, just keep my words in mind.”

Peel wanted further explanation, particularly to their destination. He didn’t like surprises, and INFINITE EYE would not be a surprise he would enjoy. Again, answers would have to wait until after the Marines finished matching their identities against the daily roster.

When cleared, the black and yellow airlock hissed, clanged and swung open. This was NASA’s secret inner sanctum, their Blue Book, their Area 51. It worried Peel when the Air Force guards betrayed apprehensive stares when they inadvertently glanced towards what lay beyond.

Peel followed Brandon’s lead and stepped forward. Sealed inside the airlock, the atmosphere was evacuated. Their suits expanded in the falling pressure. Peel quickly yawned, popping his ears. The pressure change inside his spacesuit was significant, but not enough to cause injuries.

While he waited, he noticed speckles of red dust in the air, adhering to their suits. The dust was reminiscent of outback Australia, where he had spent many years during his early career as an infantryman. The opposite end of the metal chamber held a secondary airlock, black and yellow and ready for them to enter.

“You hear me okay there, Harry?” Brandon’s voice was inside Peel’s helmet.

“Loud and clear.”

“Good.”

The second airlock swung open.

The view before them dwarfed Peel. An ancient block of stone loomed, covered with peculiar geometric designs and curious indentations that formed a chaotic circle, creating an illusion of a spiral vanishing towards its center made it appear that its center wasn’t really stone, but a tunnel.

“You’ve traveled via wormhole before, haven’t you, Harry? I could tell by all the questions you weren’t asking me.”

Without warning, Brandon touched the stone and vanished, like a fleck of dust sucked into a vacuum cleaner.

Peel chuckled, for he’d traveled via wormholes all too often in his past. This one was different to what he had previously experienced, with a bizarre membrane that would allow solids and liquids through, but not atmosphere. This would maintain the chemical, temperature, and pressure conditions unique to each side.

Knowing what to expect, he touched the stone, and he too vanished through the dimensions.

_____

They stood in a dusty field of reds and oranges, devoid of life. Despite his heavy suit, Peel felt lighter. He noticed the red skies and skyscraper-sized blocks of carved stone that formed a circle, dwarfing them like they were ants visiting Stonehenge. The shadows they cast were as long as mountains.

“This is Mars, right?”

“Good guess... and you’re right. Do you know how hard it is to hide this structure from our Earthbound astronomers not in the know?”

The stones were humbling. The engineering skills required to manufacture such behemoths were beyond any known human science. Peel recognized some symbols encountered in the abandoned Pentapod City in Antarctica today controlled by the United States government. If these stones were of a similar age, they were many hundreds of millions of years old. On Earth, they would have seen the dinosaurs come and go.

“This is a wormhole hub, Harry,” Brandon shouted through their communicators. “The only known hub in our Solar System. Built by an ancient alien race we know as the Pentapods. Three US and one German expedition into Antarctica in the 1930s were the first to discover their city, and they called them Elder Things. The Pentapods once dominated our planet. We estimate they laid these stones here one billion years ago, around the time they first arrived.”

“Impressive.”

“They’re gateways to other worlds, other dimensions, and the furthest reaches of our universe. You ever wondered why America abandoned the Space Race? Who needs rocket ships when wormholes take you wherever you want to go?”

“And where you don’t want to go, too.”

“Precisely,” Brandon chuckled. “You’ll notice we’ve left markers on each stone. The one behind we’ve marked ‘Earth’. If you ever get lost out here, keep following gates with those markers, and eventually you’ll get where you need to be again. The ones with skulls either we haven’t explored, or haven’t returned the teams we sent through. Don’t go through them.”

“And where are we going, Larry?”

The Martian wind whipped the sand, blew subzero chills across the near-vacuum atmosphere. Peel sensed his suit’s heaters working hard, and he remembered not to touch anything.

“Where, Harry?” Brandon laughed. “Why, to the very center of the universe itself.”

_____

The gateways were a labyrinth of truly bizarre destinations, crisscrossing their universe and other stranger dimensions. Colors were brilliant and unsettling, and Peel had problems describing most of them. Shapes that should have been galaxies suspended in purple or orange skies often appeared to him as sleeping giants, or as dragons, sea serpents and other foes from antiquity’s varied mythologies. Some worlds blistered, others frozen and dead. Seas of mercury washed upon platinum beaches with waves as high as houses. Caverns of methane ice dozens of kilometers thick resembled the frozen foam on beer. Ancient edifices forged from abandoned obsidian buildings bent into angles that were impossible and wrong.

On some worlds they had to clamber up narrow stairwells or through oddly angled ramps, dash between skyscrapers in unfathomable cities that may or may not have inhabitants. There were potentially thousands of unknown risks they could encounter on the often-lengthy journey between one gateway and the next.

At one stage they passed a pit of hungry, snapping maggoty-creatures he’d seen in Pakistan, and now understood their origin. Trapped in a pit, their worm-like mouth couldn’t reach high enough to take a bite from them.

Brandon was nimble, and Peel’s assumption that he was a mountaineer proved true. During a rest break, he admitted he was a former Himalayan trekking guide. These days he was a navigator between worlds. The money was better and the thrill greater. He told Peel he had three maps, one digital accessed in his suit’s computer, one on paper and one in his head. They would not become lost.

Time was hard to keep track of, except by the heads-up displays in their space suits, and it came as a surprise when he realized they had traveled for more than a week. It seemed shorter. In that time the two men passed several human outposts camouflaged in grays and purples, yet flying the American flag. Soldiers, scientists, engineers and public servants greeted them. They offered food, hot chocolate, oxygen refills and somewhere to sleep. Most appeared haunted and exhausted, as if their disconnection from the Earth had rendered their flesh from their souls, and whatever they required to maintain their humanity.

Later Brandon and Peel passed through one chamber that Peel at first did not wish to enter. He didn’t know why, except that a primordial instinct warned him to stay away. Brandon explained that they had no choice. This was the only path forward, so Peel reluctantly agreed.

The gateway opened into a huge cylindrical world a couple of kilometers in diameter, a tube that spun to create gravity. Peel and Brandon walked along a large central tower through its middle with an opposing artificial gravity of its own. A thousand meters beneath them, or above them, or to their sides depending on which way they looked, on every surface there were vast pits filled with bickering giants. The creatures were like organic soup, of eyes and mouths and tentacles and arms and organs that formed and reformed repeatedly as if they had no solidity at all.

Occasionally a tentacle would grow towards them at an alarming speed, but never actually reach them. On the first occasion a tentacle propelled forward, Peel saw its detail, and suddenly knew what they were.

“Those things can’t reach us,” explained Brandon. “They give me the creeps, though.”

“You don’t say.”

“I think this is some kind of storage area, or prison, depending on whether you think these things are machines or sentient creatures.”

“They’re Shoggoths, aren’t they?”

Brandon turned to Peel. “You’ve encountered them before.”

“Unfortunately, yes, in Australia, Utah and Antarctica.” He didn’t add that on two of the three occasions the creatures had almost killed him, or that a nuclear weapon had only stopped the gigantic one he’d encountered in Australia. There were thousands in this chamber. He had never imagined that so many could exist.

“Our scientists think that the Pentapods, who constructed this network of wormholes billions of years ago, also built the Shoggoths. These monsters were the Pentapods’ shape-changing machines. They could become almost any tool. Later, the Pentapods had a problem with the Shoggoths, because they became self-aware. I’m guessing the Shoggoths saw themselves as the Pentapods’ slaves, their unwilling servants. After millions of years, they revolted—”

“I believe you,” said Peel, wishing that this conversation could wait until they were on the other side of the next wormhole. “Actually, I know most of it already, unfortunately.”

A Shoggoth threw a blob of itself at them with such speed that Peel instinctively ran from its path. As he sprinted, he glanced over his shoulder, saw that its disembodied shape had become aerodynamic, homing in on him like a missile. It would reach him in seconds, and he couldn’t run fast enough. He couldn’t see Brandon anywhere, and if he could, there was nothing he could do to save either of them.

Then the thousands of Shoggoths flattened like an unseen weight had squashed them, and the blob fell with greater acceleration than it had launched itself. Within a second it collided with the stone between the pits, splattered as a thick puddle.

“It’s a gravity trap,” explained Brandon appearing behind Peel. They caught their breath. Peel trembled, and he was sure the mountaineer had, too.

Brandon said, “Every time the Shoggoths try to escape, gravity increases, pulling them back. Judging by the rate of fall just then, that was over a hundred times Earth’s gravity.”

“Really,” said Peel, who wished to throttle Brandon. “You could have told me first, about the gravity trap, before we entered this chamber.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right, but then I would have had to explain the Shoggoths, as well. You might not have had the courage to come through here if I had, which we needed to do.”

Peel looked back. Already, the blob was pulling itself together, crawling and rolling, dragging itself with newly formed pincer arms, before absorbing itself into the nearest Shoggoth.

“This is the worst of it.”

“I think we should move on, Brandon.”

“I think I agree with you.”

_____

In the days that passed, Brandon referred to his physical map of inter-connected wormholes far too often for Peel’s liking. If the map was also in Brandon’s head, as he claimed, perhaps his memory had become foggy.

“Your heads-up display not working?” Peel asked.

“No, why?”

Peel pointed to the physical map. “You keep looking at it.”

Brandon shrugged. “Old habits, I guess. In India and Nepal, I always relied on hard copy maps, before the days of iPads and Google Maps.”

Peel accepted his answer.

Nine days from Earth, while they replenished their oxygen tanks and suit water at a US Army base supporting a hundred men and women, they chatted causally inside a sealed tent offered for their convenience. That ‘night’, Peel had tried to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes the Shoggoths came to him, a mass of wriggling horrors that had become his bed. He had hoped he was past the terrifying memories of his initial encounters with the creatures more than a year ago now, when he had almost died. Perhaps he would never lose his phobia. Each Shoggoth encountered had been nearly unstoppable and relentless in its desire for destruction. Fear of them was justifiable.

By ‘morning’ Peel realized he must have slept, because Brandon had to wake him.

“We’re close now. Harry, really close.”

Peel rubbed his red eyes. “Don’t you worry that people will disappear out here, never come back? That Shoggoths will take them, or surviving pockets of Pentapods, or other aliens out there will take people as well?”

Brandon looked away. “Happens all the time, I’m afraid. It’s the unknown, Harry. But the unknown didn’t stop Columbus, and it won’t stop us, either. It’s the price we pay for freedom, liberty and knowledge. Still, we’re getting better at managing the risks. We’re working out which gates are safe, and which ones aren’t.”

“How the hell did you work that out, trial and error?”

Brandon frowned, tried to rub his chest through the thick material of his spacesuit, and then quickly gave up. He had learned to live with itches, but that didn’t mean he sometimes forgot his layered garments. “You know, I never thought about it... But you’re right, we have been lucky, of late.”

“Perhaps someone, or something, wanted you to be lucky.”

Peel thought upon Plenary’s warning, about an alien race hidden on the Earth, deliberately mutating human stock into something that suited their unimaginable purposes. He remembered how someone or something had crushed Lucia in her apartment. That sounded like the modus operandi of a Shoggoth to him.

When Peel caught Brandon staring at him, he saw that he had touched a nerve, exposing a previously unseen or unacknowledged truth. But without facts there was little reason to press the point further, and neither man wished to dwell upon this depressing thought when they were so far from home.

“Larry, do you have a family?”

He nodded. “Mother, father and brother in Colorado, and the girlfriend, Ingrid, lives in Florida with me. She complains there are no mountains to climb where we live. I keep telling her in Berlin where she comes from, there were no mountains either, so what’s the difference?” He passed Peel a photo of a fit woman in shorts and a singlet. A range of snow-capped mountains filled the background.

“She’s very attractive.” Peel passed back the photograph. “You two met in Darjeeling?”

He made an o-shape with his mouth. “You’ve been there?”

“Not yet.”

“Well spotted, then. You got family?”

Peel looked away. “Estranged parents and a sister in Sydney. A girlfriend in the States, you could say, perhaps.”

Brandon chuckled. “She’s your girlfriend, or she’s not. It all depends on how much you care about her.”

“She’s my girlfriend.” He felt too old to be referring to her in that terminology. Partner might have been a better word, but in the US the word raised connotations that he was in a gay relationship. “Larry, we should get moving.”

“As much as I’d love to kick back and put my feet up, as you Aussies like to say, I think you’re right.”

As they left the base, Peel noticed a team of suited workers laying cable along the path from the base to the wormhole they headed towards.

“What are they doing?” Peel asked.

“It’s a new INFINITE EYE initiative. We’re trying to lay information cables all the way back to Earth. Instant communication would be a godsend out here.”

Peel’s stomach churned, a reliable indicator that his subconscious mind didn’t like what he was seeing, yet he could find no reason to fault the logic behind what they were trying to achieve. “And after information cables, then what?”

“Power cables, and if we are really ambitious, water pipelines. Someone joked that we should install conveyor belts loaded with chocolates and beer.”

“You had any problems with the info cables?”

“Only that they kept snapping, or get cut. But that all stopped recently, like whoever, or whatever was doing it, gave up.”

And there it was; the reason ‘why’ this project worried Peel. Someone, or something, wanted the information gathered from these strange worlds spread out across the universe to make its way back to Earth.

“You like your job, Brandon?”

He shrugged. “The pay’s good... Excellent, in fact, and I get to climb things I never could, back on Earth. Long periods spent away from home, though, and it’s as creepy as all hell out here, sometimes. I keep thinking I should get Ingrid a job with INFINITE EYE, but she’s not an American.”

“Don’t!” Peel said with a finality that ended their conversation.

They pushed on, picking up a steady pace as they crossed into the next dimensions. Sometimes they had to walk many kilometers between each wormhole, through terrains that varied in their peculiar difficulties, such as gravity fields that doubled their weight, or worlds with atmospheres so dense they almost had to swim to the next wormhole, or planetary atmospheres so thick the light from their suits shone only a few meters in any direction. Neither man wished to dally between human settlements, so they always pushed through quickly.

“Almost there, my friend,” said Brandon as the latest wormhole vanished behind them, “the Eye of Infinity...”

_____

Their eventual destination blew Peel’s mind like no other horror ever had or could.

The last wormhole opened into a vast crystalline chamber of ragged rock and acutely angled stalagmite-like formations, with one great lens as a roof. Scientists and military personnel examined data compiling on printouts, desktops, telescopes and sensor arrays. They were without space suits, able to breathe here and wear normal clothes. A tiny nuclear generator provided power.

Peel noticed paintings hanging on the wall, including a Mona Lisa and a Van Gogh. A perfect replica of the Statue of David decorated one alcove. Mahogany dining tables, 3D flat screen televisions, gigantic designer refrigerators, stocked wine racks with vintage labels, old gramophones playing jazz. The items were many, and Peel wondered how they came to be here.

Peel didn’t notice the chamber and its peculiar decorations for very long, not after he had looked up.

The lens, half a kilometer wide, was a viewing portal into the stellar medium, open to a scene of the far reaches of deep space. Out there, Peel sensed something… cosmic… infinite… almost unknowable, spread like pure energy across the universe. When he locked eyes with this most powerful presence peering into the cavern, he could only stare in disbelief... through the lens... into the heart of the universe... the Big Bang... and the universal destruction of all cosmic matter corrupted by the tearing forces of dark energy... He saw everything the universe was, and he could see its heart.

“It works like this,” explained Brandon, who, Peel noticed, was not looking up with him. “When the Big Bang expanded the universe, it did so in an uneven density, and it expanded faster than the speed of light. From our time and place on Earth, the universe is only thirteen point seven billion years old, so we can only see back into a bubble of time that is thirteen point seven billion years wide, or really about fifty billion light-years wide because space has expanded faster than light since time began. But even on that vast scale, what we see is miniscule.”

He cleared his throat. “What you see in the sky is a density patch of the universe we believe is not visible from Earth, a ripple of space that expanded at the same moment the rest of the universe did at the Big Bang. Because of where this place is in space-time, we’re sure it is further than fifty billion light-years from the Earth, and so we can’t see it from home. But this is the center, the source of the expansion. Ancient Arabian scholars assumed it was a god and named it Azathoth. We call it the Eye of Infinity.”

Peel could only gasp, only tremble at the amorphous shape that was coalescing in his vision. A scene spread across thousands, perhaps millions of light years of pure, energetic space. In fact, he couldn’t clearly define what he saw at all.

Then he understood, because his view shifted and became ‘something’. The Infinite Eye was all quantum possibillties, an uncollapsed potential that could become anything. He was seeing creation in progress, his mind melding with the Eye, and together they created stars and nebula, and suddenly he understood the celestial dragons he had witnessed several days earlier. Those swirls could have been tentacles, or the arms of a spiral galaxy.

Peel felt immensely humbled, and he felt sick. The ground beneath him now had motion felt during vertigo or while drunk. He wanted to look away, but couldn’t. Peel had become the creator, or rather the director, and Azathoth was the medium through which he could create. He could sense its organic… cosmic… infinite will... He could sense its sentience, idiotic and chaotic that it was. If he looked long enough, he could shape it.

“My god.”

“In a sense, it is.”

“It’s changing... into something permanent...”

Brandon grabbed Peel by the arm, shook him. “You’ve seen it now. You understand, so don’t look again.”

“Why?” drooled Peel. Despite his fear he ached for nothing more than to stare at its super-symmetrical beauty, and its impossible lazy terror. Or was Peel evoking his own feeble emotions, and manifesting it into something unwanted and solid, like his dreams of Shoggoths?

The Eye had him, had captured his very essence, reminded Peel where he had been born at the elemental level, and where his remains would return, when the universe was at an end. This was more than star-stuff. This was the eye of everything and anything, all matter and energy and information and potential.

It wasn’t really an eye, or a creature called Azathoth, it was nothing that he could define, yet Peel and this entity of all potential energy were in a dance, creating something...

Their moment together he likened to Schrödinger’s Cat, a feline trapped in an indeterminate state until someone looked in upon it, and observed an outcome into being: alive or dead. Peel was in that potential now. He was about to create, but what? And would it be his conscious or subconscious mind that decided the outcome?

Brandon slapped Peel hard, drawing him back to the present. “I’m warning you, Harry. You want to change? Then keep looking. But if you don’t, follow me.”

Overwhelmed with anger, burning with rage and ready to fight, furious that this upstart was telling him what he could and could not do, Peel had never felt irritation so intense in his entire life.

“Come with me, and you’ll understand.”

Finally, Peel looked to where Brandon was pointing, to a tunnel guarded by US Marines in open space suits brandishing M16s. He could see a light emerging from a corner, and the shadows it cast of thrashing mockeries of people.

“It was okay at first,” Brandon took Peel by the arm, led him from the lens. “We looked into the lens and the heart of the universe, and we created.” He pointed to the antique furniture, the valuable art, and the lines of shelves with rare, first edition hardbacks. “First, we collapsed potential into what we expected, into stars and clusters and nebulas and galaxies, and that was easy.” Brandon removed his helmet, sucked hard at the air, enjoying its freshness.

Peel was sweating. Forgetting what he wore, he smashed his hand against his helmet to wipe away crawling sweat, and swore in frustration. He tried to unlatch his helmet but fumbled. Out of pride, he wouldn’t let Brandon help him.

“Then we got inventive, tried to create new weapons, new technologies, fuels and foods from nothing. That was hard, but we had our successes.”

Peel was listening, just. He still staggered like he was drunk. Staring into the Eye had cost him more than he expected and had exhausted him.

“The art, the books, the material things, they turned out to be fairly simple. Then we created things none of us ever thought we could imagine. Terrible things...”

“You had interference?” Peel blustered.

Brandon looked at Peel twice. “You know, you could be right.”

They had reached the end of the passage. Beyond the two guards, in a caged cavern, half a dozen men and women thrashed, wailed and screamed with their many mouths.

“This happened!” There was a squeak in Brandon’s voice, like he was the one who needed reassurance. “We’ve lost almost a third of our top researchers and staff to infection. Most kill themselves. These,” he gestured to the incarcerated victims, mutated exactly like Scott Cavanaugh, “they went mad, but in their minds, they are still human.”

“They...”

“They looked for too long. They looked, they accepted, and it transformed them.”

Lucia Ruiz. Crushed. Peel’s mind kept returning to that single fact. “Or someone, or something, looked for them.”

“Something?”

He tried his helmet again, but his fingers kept slipping on the latch. “We’re not the only species traversing these wormholes, Brandon. We are very recent visitors at best.”

The mountaineer had no time to answer. Peel was sick into his spacesuit, where its stench would remain for the coming days.

_____

The pressurized cavern offered temporary relief from his vomit’s acidic smell, and an escape from the oppressive energy that lurked across the heavens. Slumped in his ornately carved chair that should have belonged in King Arthur’s Court, Peel was finally coming to terms with the fact that he had lost control when he had stared up at the Eye. He had let the phenomena take hold of his mind and almost tear it apart.

Now the scientists’ bureaucratic agenda distracted him in a meeting to discuss their daily observational results. Politely, no one commented upon Peel’s stench, for he’d had no time to shower, change or clean his space suit.

The group sat in a vast chamber around a similarly ornate wooden table straight from Renaissance Europe. Immaculate candle lit chandeliers and candelabras provided illumination, hung from gold chains. 1930 vintage wines were on offer, included with a wide selection of exotic cheeses and fruits.

“We’re sorry that you had to come all this way without an explanation, Mr. Peel,” explained Professor Clare Treadwell, INFINITE EYE’s chief scientist. “Understand, if we told you what to expect...” Her voice vanished into a whisper, as if the very words required to explain were not possible in any human language, but she tried anyway. “If you had no previous Code-89 experience, you’d be seeing stars and galaxies. If your past alien encounters disturbed you too much, you’d be creating mayhem. I’m not explaining myself well, but—”

Peel chuckled, pointed to the furnishing that would cause even the most jaded antiquarians to drool. “You found the source of creation, a god in fact, and we humans have discovered we can shape it into whatever we want.”

Treadwell’s expression was one of disdain. “Naïve people would call it a god, if they could understand it at all.”

She was a woman who didn’t like to be questioned, not that it would stop him. Peel leaned forward, his eyes penetrating hers. “This is like looking at the quantum world: a particle is in many potential states at once until we observe it, when it collapses into a fixed state. The Eye is the same, only on a macro, universal scale. It is many, many possible states, until it is observed, and collapses into something solid.”

“Impressive,” said Treadwell, “that an ex-military man understands science as well as you do.”

“I read a lot. You have to when you deal with what we deal with.”

“The INFINITE EYE project promises so much. We have created everything you see here, from nothing, even if in small quantities. The furniture, our food, the priceless original art, even the oxygen we breathe, results from focused observation.”

“You can all imagine this?”

“Most of the world’s population is unimaginative. Bring them here and they would only see stars and galaxy and rock and stone, because that is all they can expect. They wouldn’t even know that they had even seen potential in its rawest form.”

“So you have to keep the mundane people away?”

Treadwell smiled, but she was not happy with his implication. “Technologies that have eluded us for decades, Peel, such as sustainable fusion power and treatments for cancer, we now have solutions for them. Time and space itself, the fabric of the universe, we can now theoretically manipulate it in this place. Perhaps you understand that time and space cannot define the Eye until it is collapsed. We might have even created the existence of our own species, here, in this sacred place.”

Peel raised an eyebrow, “Sacred? Who’s reverting to superstition now?”

She paced, circled him, taking control of the room. “The Infinite Eye is a quantum force not to be treated lightly. It’s the entire universe’s potential, it can be anything.”

“I don’t doubt that for a second. But humans aren’t the only species looking at it, creating from it, are they?” His eyes motioned towards the direction of the multi-eye victims, out of sight inside another closed cavern. No one could yet imagine them back into being normal humans again. “I mean, the Pentapods have been using this, and presumably other, observation posts for at least a billion years. You’ve got that much creation ahead of you, that much collapsed potential already shaping the universe. If observation is unaffected by time and space, or more precisely, cause and effect, we might be out-observed before we have even begun.”

She crossed her arms. “Very astute of you, Peel.”

“And how many other alien species are out there observing, even now. From what we know about the few we’ve discovered on Earth; they don’t think at all like us. The universe they are creating, or have created, or will always create, is horrific. Their will must leak into your observations.”

Treadwell stilled, except for her upper teeth chewing on her lower lip. She stared into space as if devising a victorious strategy in their heated conversation.

“Treadwell, how else do you explain the multi-eye victims?”

Every man and woman present stared at him like they knew the answer, as they knew how to breathe. Peel suspected this knowledge came at a price, because they all appeared haggard and ill, every person except for the Pentagon official towards the back that no one had yet introduced.

Treadwell looked to that official now. Her raised eyebrow asked if he granted Peel the security clearance to hear more.

The man was muscular and broad, with bright red hair cropped close to his skull. His age was indeterminate, somewhere between mid-thirties and mid-fifties. He had the air about him that he had fought in many battles, had been wounded many times, and each time he had walked away a stronger, tougher man, like cured leather. The man said in a deep, gravelly voice that immediately took command of the room, “Former Major Harrison Peel used to work for the Australian Army, Professor Treadwell, on projects very similar to this one. He has a track record of pre-empting alien anomalies.”

“Is that why he is here, General Coaldale?”

The American military officer gestured a muscular hand towards Peel, showing where the answers lay.

“Well, Mr. Peel,” Treadwell said, standing over him. “Now that you ask, we have had a problem of late. The number of our people... mutating. This has increased exponentially.”

Peel nodded. “How many, exactly?”

“How many what?”

“How many has the Eye changed, Treadwell? Transformed, as you say, altered their quantum field, to cease being human, to become something else?”

Treadwell looked again to Coaldale, who nodded his thick-necked head in approval. Perhaps Peel should have been talking to the General directly.

“Dozens. Almost a hundred. Most kill themselves.”

“And the rate of infection is increasing?” Peel blurted and Treadwell nodded. “Then it is as I suspected; that the infection is spreading. Your scientists on Earth, like Scott Cavanaugh, whom I presume are only seeing images of the Infinite Eye, they, too, are changing.”

“Cavanaugh was working on a special project, trying to match the stellar fields we’ve seen at various wormhole gates with stellar fields seen from Earth. We would like to possess an accurate real-space-time map of the wormhole network, Peel. We sent him to New Mexico briefly because not all the night sky is visible from Chile.”

“He saw more than that. I know, because we hacked into some of your very fuzzy pictures in San Augustine before you stole back Cavanaugh’s hard drive. The key word here being ‘fuzzy’ images.”

“Well, then it looks like he found the Eye, observable from Earth. That is a good thing.”

“That’s not a good thing, not at all.”

The woman crossed her arms again. “What’s your point, Peel?”

“I saw those data cables you are laying back to Earth. You’re making it easier for outsiders to abuse your observations. Forces outside our control. Bring the Eye to Earth and the multiple-eye syndrome will spread like a pandemic. What happens if your children hack into a direct feed from the Eye? What if it gets on the television networks or the Internet? Then we’re talking hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, changing into these monsters.”

Peel sensed tension spreading through the room. Lowered eyes looked away or to their superiors for answers. Eventually it was Treadwell who offered their collective response. “What is your purpose here, Mr. Peel?”

“To stop you. To stop all this.” He had no agenda on paper other than a fact-finding mission for Plenary, but he understood all too well his personal objectives. “This is not research. Nothing in this place will teach you anything that will help humanity, further science, save our planet or transform us into some super-species that will conquer the universe.”

Treadwell finally sat, took a deep breath. “Is that all you have to say? You don’t appreciate what we have already created. These tables and chairs, the art, the furniture, food and medicines, all of them we imagined into being. Soon, someone will create a cure for HIV, another might learn how to slow or stop aging.”

Peel massaged his forehead in frustration. “If we were alone in the universe, Treadwell, I’d be inclined to believe you, but we are not. I saw the Shoggoth prison pits on my journey here, as you all must have. Did the Pentapods imagine them into being? They aren’t too dissimilar to the multi-eye inflicted individuals we’ve been seeing.”

Peel looked to the shadowy Pentagon official, the true power in this room, a man he must later investigate. Unlike the chief scientist who refused to catch Peel’s eye, Coaldale never broke his gaze. The entire time the man had watched this meeting, Peel had felt a chill in his heart.

“What a shame, Peel,” said Treadwell. “The NSA sent you all this way just to stop us. You are proving to be a security risk, with all these negative thoughts in your head. You might ‘create’ something dangerous if we’re not careful.”

“Hilarious, Treadwell.”

She was very serious when she said, “Shoggoths have victimized you in your past. I know, I’ve seen your files. Could it be that it was you who imagined the multi-eye victims into being, from the very beginning?”

“That’s ludicrous.”

“Is it? Like you said, cause and effect is out of sync here.”

With horrifying clarity, Peel realized she might have a point.

“Brandon?” Treadwell said.

“Yes, ma’am?” responded the mountaineer from the back of the cavern.

“Take Mr. Peel back to Earth. He’s seen enough.” She turned back to Peel. “You have one hour to leave, and then we revoke your clearance here. That means I can have you shot for criminal trespass. You understand me?”

Peel looked to General Coaldale, his last hope, but the strange man had vanished without a sound.

“Peel?”

“Yes, loud and clear.”

_____

Eerie and endless were the alien worlds that humbled Peel and Brandon, as they traversed from one wormhole to the next. Peel was counting backwards, eager for their return to familiar territory, even though familiarity was Florida, which was still far from home and Nicola.

With the Shoggoth prison pits far behind them, Peel had relaxed a little, because he felt they were in the home stretch. They stepped through the fifth-to-last gate. Ice fields replaced by a network of vast caverns gnawed out of metamorphic rock, kilometers high and aglow with jeweled shades of rich blues. Tube-like tunnels extended towards forever, provoking nightmarish images of the hollows of calcified bones. Seen close, the stone’s texture mimicked coral and drooping tongues. Its black shadows were deep and unfathomable, concealing treacherous pits to deeper levels, unmasked only when they shone their helmet-lights across them. In this dimension, men were nothing but microbes in a maze of fossilized anatomy, travelers in the preserved arteries of an enormous and ancient beast.

It was the expansive silence that unsettled Peel more than any shadow, for no sound carried in the vacuum. Only two sets of labored breaths reverberating heavily through their suit communicators. It was the only noise to remind Peel he was not deaf, and in time their exhalations and inhalations became a depressing reminder that the nearest living humans were likely a billion light-years distant, in both space and time.

Peel trundled behind Brandon, feeling his failure. It had been naïve of him to presume the power-players of the INFINITE EYE project would cease their research just because he asked them. Not with the money the US Government had invested in this project, and with the many scientific and engineering breakthroughs that the Infinite Eye promised, and through them, success for their military and corporate backers.

“Cheer up, Harry,” Brandon’s empty voice echoed in Peel’s helmet. “Treadwell treats everyone with the same disrespect, including her direct reports, like Ridley.”

“Yes, she was very charming.”

“Whenever someone gets in her way, the only response she understands is to step on them. She gets away with it because she’s well connected. Did you know she has the ear of the President of the United States, as a leading scientific advisor?”

“Nice for her.”

“She’s also anxious, even if she doesn’t show it. The multiple eye syndrome is affecting more and more of us. Everyone is worried.”

“So am I, Brandon.”

“I’m just telling you this for your own information, Harry. Use it as you will.”

Peel remembered that Brandon had been in the confrontational meeting. “And I’m appreciative that you are.”

“INFINITE EYE is one of America’s all time biggest black-op projects, thanks to the discovery of the Pentapod city ruins in Antarctica, and the first wormholes we found there. That is where the wormhole gateway in Cape Canaveral came from, by the way, freighted up from Antarctica.”

“You can move gates?” Peel asked.

Brandon chuckled, “You can, so long as you don’t move one gate through another gate. From what I heard, the first and only time we attempted that, both gates collapsed, creating a black hole. Thankfully, it only existed for a few seconds and only created a hundred meter wide crater in Antarctica. Killed a lot of engineers, though.”

“I see,” said Peel.

“But getting back to Treadwell, you don’t get to run a show like this, unless you’re politically connected.”

“And what about Coaldale?”

“Him,” Brandon’s voice quivered. “I know nothing about General Byrd Coaldale, except that he’s the Pentagon’s ‘Problem Eliminator’, whatever that means. He gives me the creeps.”

Peel mouthed that he agreed. Coaldale was an anomaly, and Peel suspected the man to be dangerous in more ways than was obvious. He felt certain that their paths would cross again, and that meeting would not be pleasant.

Peel paused. Shuddered. “Larry, did we come this way?” The multiple worlds that they had passed through had been so vivid and varied it was difficult to remember them all. But this world had left no lasting impression, nothing. “It’s just that I don’t remember any of this.”

“Let me check.”

“Actually, I’m positive this is the wrong direction,” Peel spoke quickly as his stomach churned. His palms in their thick gloves had become hot with sweat.

“Sometimes the terrain changes, like we’ve been away for a few million years or something. Or entropy is factored up by several dozen logarithmic units, decaying the terrain into something unrecognizable. I wasn’t sure...”

“You better check.” Peel felt certain they’d taken a wrong turn and had lost their way.

Brandon fumbled with his physical map, turned it and turned it again, as if he couldn’t decide which way was up.

“What about the key at the last gate, Larry? I saw you check it. I checked it too, and it said Earth.”

“I’m glad you said that, because I was worrying.”

When neither man said anything, a vacuous silence crept over them like a deathly chill.

“I think we should turn back. Check again.”

“I think you’re—”

The scream that howled inside Peel’s ears lasted only a second, silenced only when Brandon’s helmet popped in the instant the vacuum and cold consumed him.

The mountaineer’s head exploded, eyes and teeth danced in mad meteoric arcs from his splitting skull. Peel couldn’t decide if Brandon’s deconstruction occurred during or after his helmet separated from his body.

Then Brandon’s entire body tore itself open, rendering his torso, abdomen and legs into four distinct pieces. The trajectories of blood globules, frozen solid, shattered without sound when they smashed upon the rock.

Peel could only stare. He was numb with shock. There were more horrors to witness. Brandon’s corpse was morphing, his insides spilling as bubble-sludge of blues and grays and blacks, foam that wriggled like a nest of fat worms. A monster crawled from Brandon’s gutted husk, a maggoty mass of eyes opening in their hundreds, and mouths with barbed tongues that had eaten the mountaineer from the inside out.

Overcoming his paralysis, Peel turned and sprinted, stifling a scream. In moments, that monster would be upon Peel.

Instinctively, he ducked and weaved between the coral-like outcrops, while his eyes remained alert for shadowed pits. Yet his only thought was to find the gateway and escape through it.

In the vacuum, the stalking beast remained unheard, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

When Peel dared to glance backwards, he saw a shadowy shape flickering between the cracks. Unnatural reverberations felt through the primordial rock were the only other sign that the beast was on the chase.

It had been stalking them, and probably for some time. It had snuck up upon Brandon first, perhaps slurped unnoticed into his air tanks, but it no longer chose stealth when it had played its hand.

Peel ran hard, then harder. His face reddened and his transparent shield fogged over. In a panic, he almost ripped it free so he could see. In that panic, he almost killed himself.

The gateway loomed, thick with alien curvature and its complex mathematical calculations that allowed for the bending of space-time.

He sprinted, stumbled once, then twice.

A tentacle of vicious maggoty rot alive with talons and sucker-like nodules shattered an outcrop overhead. The creature was close.

Peel dashed again and leaped into the gateway.

_____

In a snow field beneath three dull red suns, Peel fell sprinting, crashed into ancient ice with a resounding thud.

He withdrew his handgun, fired every bullet in the magazine at the gate until the rock chipped, erasing the calculations as the wormhole closed forever.

The monster which Peel was now certain to have been a Shoggoth, hopefully remained trapped on its opposite side, with millions, or perhaps billions of light years separating them now that the wormhole had collapsed. Otherwise, he was a dead man.

The Shoggoth that had attacked them hadn’t been large, not like the supertanker-sized monstrosities he had seen lining the pits in the gravity cylinder, but it had been terrifying. More like the creature he had encountered in the Shoggoth weaponized puzzle he had fallen into during a mission in Darwin. This creature might have been a fragment that had escaped and followed them from the Shoggoth prison dimension, but how... that baffled Peel.

Lying in the snow, Peel realized he was losing heat fast, so he stood. Ejecting the spent magazine, he loaded a second and chambered the first round. When he scanned his surroundings, the only movement was flittering snow and the only noise was the wind. Nothing, thankfully, was coming after him.

Safe for the moment, Peel focused on how to return home safely, so he examined the gates for clues. The wormhole from which he had fled was definitely defunct, rendered inert by his grazing bullets.

The gate’s marker showing Earth remained prominent, the only Earth symbol at this nexus. Eight other gates on eight more slabs of frosted, bulbous green rock included four safe routes to unknown destinations, and four skulls. The map which might have told him where each wormhole led was lost with Larry Brandon. Sweating despite his chill, Peel realized that he could not remember which gate led back to Treadwell and her observation post. It was a moot point anyway, as she was at least ten days distant.

He might reach the last resupply base, over twelve hours behind them now. Checking his suit’s oxygen, he had eight hours remaining. Half an hour’s worth had expelled in that single, terrifying encounter fleeing the Shoggoth, an encounter that had lasted only a few minutes. Going back was not an option.

Despite atmospheric oxygen, Peel didn’t know how to extract it, or to check for toxic trace elements. Regardless, the air temperature was a cool minus one hundred degrees Celsius, another killer.

Peel forced himself to breathe calmly and slowly. He had eight choices, four of which might lead him to another exploratory team or midway station, or might not. Even if he was lucky enough to choose the correct route, he might not have the oxygen remaining to make it.

Not ready to give up, Peel marched slowly from one stone gateway to the next, checking their details with minute thoroughness.

The only portal with the Earth symbol Peel had destroyed. He couldn’t remember the only path back to the observation chamber, for each gateway was too similar to the next. And there was no hope of translating the unearthly writing on the greenstone.

And then he might have cut off any opportunity for anyone on this side of the wormhole juncture from ever returning to Earth.

In frustration, he staggered to the Earth gate and pulled at the symbol. To his surprise, it came away easily, glued in place with a thick, alien resin, not unlike the pulsating blue-gray-black blob that had chased him through the defunct gate.

The glue was a temporary measure...

Peel’s heart skipped a beat. Had someone switched the symbols deliberately? Had the Shoggoth lured him and Larry Brandon into a trap?

Quickly he checked the other eight symbols.

It came as no surprise that the strange resin held one, and only one, of the skulls to its gateway.

There had been a switch which suggested human intervention.

Or perhaps inhuman intervention. Perhaps the Shoggoth had not been tracking them, but had lured them into the dimension in which it ambushed them.

Before he changed his mind, Peel switched the Earth and skull symbols, and stepped into the other gate, the correct gate which would take him home.

_____

Life had its moments, and sometimes the simplest moments were the most fulfilling. Wipers plowed snow from the windshield of Peel’s sedan, revealing Maryland’s picturesque night lights. The car’s heater warmed his hands like his vacuum suit never could, and Nicola in the passenger seat wore a smile that banished the last lingering chill from his heart. These were the moments that Peel lived for, every day.

Safely back on Earth with a better-than-expected debriefing with Joss Plenary behind him, they had given him a day’s leave. Still assigned to the INFINITE EYE investigation, but the next stage could wait until tomorrow. He needed a rest because wormhole travel had proved exhausting and stressful, and a single day to see Nicola again was worth a week of recovering alone.

He held Nicola’s hand tightly when he didn’t need to shift gears. He reflected on how comforting the mundane world could be, of car lights and road signs, of snow, and the touch of someone he loved.

“I thought about your request, I thought about it a lot while I was away.”

Nicola’s eyes lit up. “And...?”

“And I spoke to Plenary. He’s more than happy to take you onboard, in fact, he almost jumped at it.”

“Oh...” Releasing her grip on his hand, Nicola’s rosy expression deflated. For a long time, she said nothing. She wouldn’t look at him. “I was hoping you’d choose the other option?”

“I thought you’d be happy?”

“I’m happy you decided, I guess.”

Peel didn’t answer, not sure what to say.

A few minutes later they parked outside Jack Dixon and his girlfriend Jennifer’s house in Maryland, visiting for dinner. When Peel stopped the engine, neither he nor Nicola made any effort to get out of the car and trundle up the path. Without the engine running it would soon get cold inside, yet neither would be the first to move.

“You’re not happy?”

“I thought the idea of settling down, getting married and starting a family would appeal to you more than this crusade that you and your buddy Jack have started.”

Peel gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. He knew he should be more sympathetic to Nicola’s desires, but he also knew who he was, what kind of man he had become, and what he must do. Treadwell and her team were fools even if their intentions were noble, and if he didn’t stop her, they could unleash all kinds of horrendous disasters upon the world. It was not a world he wanted to live in.

“Nicola...” He didn’t know where to begin, so he gave himself a moment to collect his thoughts, and thankfully Nicola gave him the time to do so. “Nicola, this last assignment I undertook, you’re right when you say it was dangerous, because I did almost die. I’ve lied to you. I’ve lied to you many times about this, and now I’m sorry that I did. But you know what? Just like what we achieved together in Nevada, I need to achieve the same outcome on this assignment. I can’t sleep at night thinking that millions of people could die senselessly if I do nothing about it.”

“You know, I understand—”

“Please, Nicola, let me finish. This threat will only go away if we can put an end to this secretive bureaucratic organization that thinks they can control what they don’t understand. I know I do what I do only because I want to save people, every person I can—”

“But not the people closest to you,” she choked on her words. “I’m sorry. I do understand, and that makes it all the worse for me. But don’t you feel sometimes that we’ve already done our service? That the government owes us now, that they should allow us the opportunity to live free and without care again?” She leaned close, kissed him on his chin. “And don’t forget about your own needs, darling, and my needs, and our collective needs as a couple, or you’ll lose sight of what exactly it is that you’re fighting for.”

Peel took Nicola’s hand in his, stared deep into her gray eyes. “I’m sorry, Nicola, but I can’t. I’ve got to keep fighting. It’s not getting any better, but I could use you at my side.”

Nicola cast her gaze downwards, smiled without happiness.

Peel felt certain he would always remember this moment, for he had just shattered all her dreams. “You should leave me.”

Frustrated, she hit him on the arm, then again in the chest, harder the second time, before she burst into tears. “I’m not leaving you, not while either of us is kicking and screaming.” She touched her hand tenderly over his chest, where his heart beat fast. “This is where I belong. Like it or loathe it, I belong with you.”

Peel hugged her close. He never wanted to let go. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. I think I would go mad.”

“You are mad.” It was Nicola who eventually pulled away. “Let’s talk all this later, the details about us, and our future working relationship.”

“So...? What are you saying?”

“So, I’ll join your group, but not forever, and when I’m ready to quit, you’re going to promise that you’ll quit, too.” She pushed his chest above his heart, insistent upon a response.

“It’s a promise,” he said, feeling relieved, and yet also at a loss.

“Good.”

With a smile on her face and a spring in her step, Nicola clambered out of the car into the cold winter night, tightened her overcoat, and donned her beanie and mittens for their quick dash from the drive to the suburban house. Peel in his parka and beanie followed her to the front door, and together they pounded furiously.

Dixon and Jennifer greeted them and welcomed them inside. Immediately the party split, women in the lounge and the men in the kitchen. Dixon was preparing a Mexican extravaganza that got Peel’s mouth watering.

“I thought I’d give you a taste of a proper drink,” Peel laughed, placing two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon on the table. “From the Barossa Valley, South Australia, the best wine in the world.”

“I’m sure it is, mate!” Dixon mimicked Peel’s Australian accent. “How was Florida?”

Peel shrugged, “And the rest of it, Jack. It’s like Antarctica all over again.”

“Antarctica?” Dixon, too, had encountered Shoggoths in his past, most recently in Antarctica, and knew firsthand how destructive and cunning they were.

“NASA’s got themselves a network of wormholes that stretches right across this galaxy, and the next couple of billion that go with it. Like GRAY NUBULA, but on steroids.”

Dixon nodded. “Knowing what we already know, and what we’ve already seen, are you really that surprised?”

“No, I guess not.”

“But that’s not what’s worrying you, is it?”

Peel popped the cork and poured two glasses of red. “Cheers, Jack,” they chinked a toast.

“What can you tell me? Clearance-wise, I mean.”

“Plenary has cleared you for most of the details. And I understand you’ve viewed my initial report?”

“Yes, and yes.”

“I don’t know how else to put it, except that NASA found a shortcut to the center of the universe. They were looking at... this...” Peel struggled for the words to describe what he had seen, immediately realizing that no words would ever be adequate to explain the Infinite Eye. “This cosmic god... Just by looking at it, people could create things, manifest reality from pure quantum possibility. You should see what they have manifested. But humans aren’t the only ones out there in the universe observing. With alien interference, I’m of the opinion that the Eye changes people into the monster we bagged in New Mexico. That’s what happened to Cavanaugh, when he looked too closely.”

“Shit, buddy, you do nothing by halves, do you?”

Peel didn’t answer him.

“But that’s still not what worries you, is it?”

“I found out later from Ridley when I got back to Florida, that quantum uncertainties ensure that NASA keeps losing their observation posts. Observers who could not accept what they saw kept collapsing the Infinite Eye into something which they could accept: stars and galaxies, and then they lost the use of the Eye to create at those places. Happens all the time, he told me. Regions where NASA scientists could view the Eye, suddenly cut off from them, again and again. Can you imagine what our night skies might have looked like, hundreds of thousands of years ago, while our ancestors were developing imaginations?”

Dixon took a moment to imagine, before shaking his head to clear what his mind’s eye saw. “But they kept finding them, right — NASA, I mean — these observation points?”

Peel nodded, no longer enjoying the wine, because his mind was back in the cold, the dark and the vacuum, hunted by a Shoggoth. He should have kept his fears to himself, but Jack Dixon was the only man on the planet he knew who would understand.

“Someone, or more likely something alien, keeps showing us the way, how to get back... how to see again. Something wants to interfere with our observations and wants us to mutate: to evolve the entire human race into the Cavanaugh thing. But for what purpose, that’s what I just don’t know.”

Dixon had ceased drinking, too. He looked as ill as he had that day in New Mexico.

“Did you uncover anything on this Byrd Coaldale, like I asked?” asked Peel.

Dixon put his glass on the kitchen table. “You won’t like it.”

“I didn’t think I would.”

“He’s highly classified. As soon as I pulled his details, I had NSA internal investigations knocking on my door, asking me what I was up to.”

“So he’s protected.”

“Oh yeah. I spent half a day in a Pentagon debriefing cell explaining myself.”

“You’re okay now?”

“They had nothing on me, but they made me very uncomfortable for as long as they could get away with it. But I can’t go poking around on Coaldale again, otherwise I really am in trouble.”

Peel nodded. “But you found some useful information on him?”

“I had to be subtle. Like I said, you won’t like it. He leads several weapons development programs for the Pentagon, and has connections with the secret projects RESOLUTION ZERO, INFINITE EYE and GRAY NEBULA.”

Peel frowned. “The three largest projects linked to the Pentapod City in Antarctica?”

“Exactly. What is interesting is that he’s a former US Army Ranger. He led one of the first teams that penetrated the deepest levels of the Pentapod City, back in 1995.”

Peel frowned.

“It gets better. His team got lost down there for eighteen days. Coaldale was the only one who returned alive, but he was a changed man. Around the same time a CIA operative down there, Tyler Jansen, vanished and was never seen again, shortly after talking to Coaldale. When Coaldale returned from his tour of duty, he divorced his wife, disowned his kids and hasn’t seen them since.”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder?”

“Maybe, and yet he’s risen so high in the Pentagon. You thinking what I’m thinking, about what his role in all this is?”

Peel grinned. “I’m betting Coaldale’s job is to adapt discovered Pentapod technology into weapons for the United States military.” He wondered if Coaldale was the mysterious superior that both Dirk Kinsella and Chad Carter had hinted at, the man pulling all the strings behind the scenes.

Dixon nodded. “And a Shoggoth is a weapon, my friend. Don’t you ever forget that.”

——

The hotel room in Antofagasta was tiny and hot, yet practical and clean. The view, at least, was pleasant, of fog gathering over the Pacific Ocean. Shortly after their arrival, Nicola disappeared into the bathroom, while Peel laid out their baggage for ease of access. He then checked the package given to him by the NSA contact who’d met them at Aeropuerto Cerro Moreno. As promised, the NSA had provided them with light intensifier goggles, flak jackets, 9mm automatics with a suppressor and three spare clips for each weapon, He’d hoped for Glocks. However, the two Walther P38s were effective enough sidearms, despite their worn appearance.

Peel opened his briefcase, removed the satellite photo imagery of the Llano de Chajnantor Observatory and the surrounding mountainous desert of the Atacama he had brought with him from Maryland. He was careful not to press his fingers on any of the photographic details in case of a compromised mission, and his fingerprints would then provide mission details that interrogators could use against them.

Threats, however, seemed unlikely, and this promised to be a relatively straightforward operation. If he thought it was really dangerous, he would have talked Plenary out of making this Nicola’s first official venture into the field as an NSA Code-89 operative. A collective of nonviolent and somewhat reasonable, if not unstable scientists, who on the whole had good, if misguided, intentions ran INFINITE EYE. They were not the types to send an assassin after him.

He studied the photographs again, even though he already knew their detail from earlier examinations. The astronomical observatory operated in the heart of the driest desert in the world. At high altitude the sun would burn their skin and the thin atmosphere would leach all moisture from their pores. He and Nicola planned to approach the radio-dish array at night when it was cool, when the wide-planed desolation would not betray their presence and the heat wouldn’t cripple them.

He heard a noise and looked up. Nicola walked nude from the bathroom, switched on the television with the remote, changed channels until a Latin America soap opera played, then sat on the end of their double bed to brush her teeth.

“You look exhausted,” he said.

She wouldn’t look at him. “I am exhausted. We’ve been flying for twenty-four hours without a shower. I’m dirty and hot, and aware that we’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

“It’s a long drive. We’ll take it in turns while the other sleeps. I’ll drive first.”

Nicola clenched her teeth. “How noble of you.” She returned to the bathroom. Peel watched her tight bottom and taut legs with every step, as she bent over the sink and spat out her toothpaste. She rinsed her mouth with bottled water, so not to catch any local parasites.

“If you’re sleepy, why did you put the television on?”

“To refresh my Spanish, lover.” She was angry, and he didn’t understand why.

Peel felt flushed. Nicola had been cold towards him for most of their trip from Washington DC to Chile, yet here she was walking around naked, as if he wasn’t there. “Why did you take your clothes off?” he finally asked.

“Because I’m dirty, and it’s more comfortable than being in what I was wearing. No? How about because I’m about to have a shower, or because I’m about to go to bed? Or what about because I just feel like being nude? Enough reasons for you?”

Peel didn’t know what to say. Five seconds ago, he felt aroused, but not now.

She disappeared into the bathroom again, ran the shower. Peel followed her in and sat on the lip of bath next to her. She was holding out her hand, waiting for warm water to run through her fingers.

“Okay, I’ve upset you.”

“Really?”

“Please Nicola, don’t be sarcastic. I thought we talked through issues that bothered us.”

With the water warmed, Nicola washed grime from her face. “Is that right? What else do you call all that lecturing you gave me on the three flights it’s taken us to get here?”

Peel tried to remember what they had discussed. Mostly it had been small talk about things they could do to improve their flat, what to do with her parents when they visited from Portland next month, the in-flight movie they had watched together. Nothing about the mission, in case someone overheard them.

“Harrison, it was insulting. You treated me like a child, like I’m some rookie.”

“I didn’t think I did.”

“You did, believe me. I know the risks. You don’t have to protect me all the time.”

“I thought I was helping.”

“You were being patronizing.” She turned her back on him, washed herself. “Imagine if you’d talked to me like that in front of Plenary or Dixon. Think about how that would have made you and I look, as a couple and as a team at work.”

“I don’t get what you’re talking about.”

After rinsing off the soap she turned off the shower, stuck out her hand until Peel passed her a towel. “We had an agreement. We work together. That means I take risks like you do. That means you can’t protect me, anymore.”

“So you want to go over the mission briefing again?” Peel had been reluctant to ask this question. Even though it was unlikely, there could be surveillance bugs in the room. He refused the first room on offer as a precaution.

“No, lover, I don’t fucking want to go over the mission briefing again. I just want you to trust me, to know that I’m capable of doing this.”

Peel shrugged. “I do trust you.”

“Do you?”

Dry now, without bothering to dress, she returned to the bedroom and sat on the room’s only chair that was wide enough for only one person, where she resumed watching the soap opera.

“Have a shower, Harrison. You smell, too.”

Peel did as she asked, feeling clean again as hot water rushed over his dry skin. Without bothering to dress, he returned to the room to join her. Nicola remained transfixed by the television, still seated where he had left her. He climbed into their double bed, throwing off the blankets and sheet, because it was too hot.

He felt his exhaustion. She looked exhausted too. Neither of them had slept well on the three flights. The sun was setting, so there was no harm in getting an early night.

He still took a moment to check and load the Walther P38 before he slipped it under his pillow.

“Are you coming to bed?”

“In a minute.” She still wouldn’t look at him, her eyes glued to a couple arguing in Spanish about who really was the father of the woman’s son.

Peel didn’t remember falling asleep. He woke eight hours later with the early morning light. Nicola had passed out on the lounge with the television still on.

——

Peel sped through the pink-orange desert, churning dust and gravel in the wake of their black four-wheel drive. Nicola slept next to him, after taking the first three-hour shift while Peel had dozed. Now that they were deep into the desert, the road had become little more than gravel. The sun beat upon them from up high in the cloudless rich blue sky. At five thousand meters above sea level, the air was thin. He and Nicola had drunk Incan style coca leaf tea at the last café, two hundred kilometers behind them now, a local drug to reduce the effects of altitude sickness.

The few times they stopped to stretch their legs, they realized how hot it was outside, nearly forty degrees Celsius. By night, the temperature would drop significantly, as the thin air could not hold the heat.

The desert reminded Peel of some alien landscapes Larry Brandon had shown him. Nothing moved out here. Nothing lived here. The Atacama Desert was the driest region on the Earth, with fifty times less moisture than California’s Death Valley. It was an environment that sucked the life out of everything.

Nicola and he had barely talked all day, and he wondered why. He told her he was sorry for being condescending.

“I’m sorry too,” she finally said when they took a break on the side of the road to stretch their legs.

“About what?” he asked.

“I’ve been mad at you. When our new direction together became a reality, when we headed off on this mission together, I realized how much I wanted you not to ask me to come back to this world, and how much I wanted you to leave it.” She ran to him, hugged him tight. He wrapped her in his arms and suddenly didn’t feel so alone anymore.

“Darling, I should have told you what I really wanted.”

“We can still have that,” Peel said, “when we’re done here, we’ll quit. Both of us.”

She gave him a big smile, hugged him again. “I don’t want to lose you. You don’t know how much of a relief your words are to me, after so much worry, for so long.”

He gave her a big smile and hoped he could live up to his promise.

——

Several hours later, he checked his satellite navigation system. They were close to their destination, less than five kilometers now, so he pulled over and stopped the vehicle.

Stepping out into the heat, he took binoculars to examine details of the surrounding mountain ranges. A minute later, Nicola joined him, her hand shading her eyes against the sun despite her protective sunglasses. They were both wearing black, a color that unfortunately absorbed heat.

“We’ve arrived,” Peel passed her the binoculars. “Over that rise we’ll find the radio telescopes and the office complex where Scott Cavanaugh worked, before he visited New Mexico.”

“This isn’t a high-risk operation, is it?” She took his hand. “I mean, you kept telling me that all the way down here. I’d hate for it all to go bad, now.”

“I’m sure we’ll be fine, but there is nothing wrong with being cautious. Being cautious and distrustful of everything has kept us alive.”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Being condescending.”

“Oh,” and suddenly the last two days came back to him, remembering how he had lectured her. “Yes, I’m sorry about that.”

“But there is a risk?”

He nodded. “The people behind INFINITE EYE won’t want us snooping around. They’ve made that very clear to me, already.”

“Won’t they have sent someone in weeks ago, to clean up anything incriminating Cavanaugh might have left behind? That’s what I would have done, in their place.”

Peel nodded, “Except I’m counting on someone replacing Cavanaugh. It’s not like he completed his work.”

“Looking for the Eye?”

“Yes.” The thought that Azathoth might be inside Earth’s visible bubble of the universe terrified Peel.

Nicola shrugged. “So why have we stopped here? This is the middle of nowhere.”

Peel pointed to the nearest mountain. “I’m about to drive us as close as I can to the base of that peak. Then you and I are going to kit-up and climb it. There, we can observe the layout of the Llano de Chajnantor Observatory, which lies on its opposite side.”

“A pleasant hike in the country.”

“It will be hard work, because its elevation is about five and a half thousand meters, half a kilometer higher than we are already.”

She frowned. “I already knew that.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m just saying it sounds like fun.”

“Then it will be.” He went to the backseat and opened their kit bag, then passed her a flak jacket. “But like I said, we need to prepare for the worst of all outcomes.”

“What could happen? You’re talking about spying on geeky astronomers.”

Peel scanned the far horizons where heated air shimmered in waves, half expecting to see another human walking towards them with a gun in hand. Of course there was nothing. They were very much alone.

“It’s not astronomers I’m worried about.”

“Then what?”

He was going to say Shoggoths, but thought better of it. Shoggoths, he realized with unnerving clarity, were the only reason he was being as cautious as he was.

——

A three-quarter moon lit the vast desert plain in eerie blue and black. From a crag in the highest peak, Peel had watched the landscape for many hours, from late afternoon until midnight. No clouds moved in the sky. No trees or scrub blew in the wind. There was only rock and sand. Even the many radio telescope antennas dotted across the vast, gravelly fields were still.

The Milky Way itself was brilliantly clear and full of so many stars, a spectacle he had never seen as clearly from Earth’s night skies anywhere else in the world, including his recent visit to New Mexico.

Nicola fidgeted next to him. She’d been itching to move for hours. “There is nothing down there. No sign of anything out of the unusual.”

“I like to be cautious.”

“We go now, get what we want, and then it’s all over. We return home and quit.”

She was excited, and this worried him.

“Harrison?”

When he said nothing she stood, collected her heavy backpack with a grunt of effort, because it included enough water for two days in the desert. “Everyone’s asleep by now. Please, let’s get this over and done with.”

He forced himself to chuckle, afraid that if he didn’t, he might betray his fear. He worried that his fear was irrational, that he’d encountered one too many ‘horrors from beyond’ in his life, and they had beaten him, if not physically, then in his mind. “Okay Nicola, but slowly, slowly!”

They set off together. Marching downhill was hard work at this altitude, especially carrying a pack that weighed in at around fifteen kilograms. They would leave the water nearby when they got closer, within easy reach should they require it, but not on their person when stealth and speed inside the observatory was important.

When they hit the flat, she turned to give him the briefest smile. “It’s nice, isn’t it, doing things together?”

He didn’t know what to say, because in that moment it sounded like she wanted this life working together as spies, so he said nothing.

Later, he considered that he had misunderstood her, but whatever her meaning, he knew it was more important to focus on the mission. Yet all he could think upon was the Shoggoth chasing him through the alien world.

Thirty minutes later, after they had walked beneath three of the radio telescope antennas, each towering twelve meters into the clear skies, they had arrived. They drank their full, then hid their remaining water in a tool shed. Peel knew from his research that this array was the most expensive ground based astronomical observatory ever constructed, and reputedly ten times more powerful than the Hubble Telescope. No wonder INFINITE EYE had sent Cavanaugh here to find the various locations of their wormhole networks. Peel, of course, was counting on, and hoping, that Cavanaugh had observed nothing.

“That building,” Peel pointed to a distant complex. “Cavanaugh worked in there.”

“Yes, I studied the brief and the mission maps, too.” She pushed on.

Peel grabbed her arm.

“What are you doing?” she snapped.

Gently, he let go of her. “Please, I want you to be careful.”

“Okay, okay!” Frustration crept into her voice. “Nothing is happening here. This place is like a grave.” Peel tensed all his muscles as he forced himself not to argue further. She was in a hurry, and this worried him. Instead of saying so, he donned his light intensifier goggles, fitted the suppressor to his P38, and through hand signals asked Nicola to do the same. She did so without argument.

The complex was easy enough to walk into, as they kept nothing here. After all, this was the center of an inhospitable desert where the nearest human settlement was some fifty kilometers distant. The desert itself was security enough. Thieves did not wander casually into this place.

Inside, there were dim lights, so they removed their goggles. They quickly spied a control room with four nocturnally active scientists speaking in a mixture of English and Spanish, but mostly they were interpreting data compiling on various monitors. Nicola and Peel snuck past easily without being noticed.

Deeper into the complex, they found what had once been Cavanaugh’s office, but from the signs of recent occupation it now belonged to his replacement. When Peel saw printed memos from Martin Ridley and Clare Treadwell to an individual named Leanne Searby, he knew he was in the right place.

Peel and Nicola split tasks. He checked Searby’s computer while Nicola rummaged through the desk, archive boxes, filing cabinets, and in-trays.

“What are we looking for, exactly?”

Peel looked to the woman he adored, realized that he had always loved her despite the stress they had been through of late. “Anything we can use to prove INFINITE EYE exists. Anything we can use as leverage against them.”

He went to the computer, which was operating on a standby power setting. When he spun the mouse, the screen came alive. It seemed too good to be true when there was no password prompt to unlock the screen.

Excited, Peel rummaged through the file directories. Many of the files were password protected, but that wouldn’t be a problem for the NSA cyber-jocks back home. He started downloading files onto his data-stick.

The internet browser was on. He checked the open webpage of a video feed.

At first, Peel couldn’t be sure what he was looking at. When he realized he was attempting to manifest shapes in the hazy image, what he was staring at came as a shock .

The Eye...

He rapidly minimized the screen, then copied the web address onto his data-stick.

There was a sudden commotion behind him, of furniture being thrown or crushed, and probably both, and a squeak that should have been a scream.

Turning slowly, raising his handgun as he did, Peel saw Nicola pinned to the wall, her legs dangling a meter above the floor. A muscular hand was about her throat, crushing her windpipe. With horror, Peel realized she was choking.

At the other end of the very long arm was General Coaldale, as intense and focused as Peel had remembered him at the Infinite Eye observation point. It was impressive and scary that the man could have snuck up on them with such stealth, and that he could hold Nicola so high with such ease.

Peel didn’t hesitate as he put three bullets into Coaldale. When this seemed to do nothing, he shot the former Ranger again, then twice more, then again.

Coaldale acted as if nothing was hurting him, like they were mosquito bites rather than flesh-tearing slugs of metal penetrating his skin.

Peel raised his weapon, stepped forward and aimed it at Coaldale’s forehead. He fired again until the chamber clicked open. The bullets slammed into Coaldale’s flesh. There was no mistaking that. He should be dead many times over. Then the general’s flesh rippled for the briefest moment before the wounds healed and his face was whole again.

There was never a moment where Coaldale was bleeding.

Peel shuddered, took a step backwards as he dropped his weapon. No human could have survived taking as many bullets Peel had put into the man at such close range.

“Let her go, Coaldale.” He looked to Nicola. She was close to unconsciousness. “I promise you; you’ll regret it if you don’t.”

Coaldale’s smile was cold and dry, held just long enough for Peel to realize the coming seconds would not be good. “Look at your lover one last time, Peel.”

His arm became an amorphous matter that penetrated Nicola’s eyes and mouth, popped her eyes and tore her cheeks. Her neck snapped, then her chest and abdomen exploded along with her flak jacket as blue-gray-black viscous tentacles tore muscle, flesh and organs, turning her inside out.

Before he could react to anything, Peel felt wetness splash on his skin, felt stickiness that a distant corner of his mind finally registered as Nicola’s blood. He watched unbelieving as her mangled corpse dropped and then slumped to the floor.

Without seeming to move, the monster that was Coaldale pounced on Peel, immobilizing him against the opposite wall.

Coaldale’s face floated in an ever-changing sea of lumpy flesh. Its eyes bigger than any human eye should be. Multiple mouths with barbed tongues opened, then licked Peel’s face.

A shudder ran the gauntlet of Peel’s every muscle from feet to neck. “You’re a Shoggoth?”

The floating, separated components of Coaldale’s face laughed. “I almost had you out there in the wormhole network. Do you know how long it took me to find another route back to this miserable planet when you cut me off?”

Peel said nothing. The weight of the Coaldale-Shoggoth was crushing him. Within minutes, he would join Nicola. It came as no surprise that he welcomed such an end.

“You humans are pathetic,” continued Coaldale. “You think you understand us, you think you can control us, even destroy us. But what you cannot appreciate is that there are hundreds like me, Shoggoths that can impersonate human beings and infiltrate your society all over the globe. What you also cannot appreciate is that eventually we’ll control you. Eventually, you’ll become our slaves. Better a life of servitude for a hundred million years than to be wiped out this century, as your species seems keen on doing.”

“So… it’s the... Shoggoths... who want us to mutate?” Peel half spoke, half mouthed because every time he breathed out, Coaldale crushed him a little more so his lungs couldn’t expand. “You want us... all... to become like Cavanaugh?”

“That wasn’t so hard to work out, was it, Peel? We are the Shoggoth conspiracy. Me, or one of the other Shoggoth-humans working with me, impose our influence on the human observers. The will of the weakest of us is far greater than the will of the strongest human. We make you see what we want to create, not the other way around.”

Peel gurgled. His hands, which were still free, scratched behind him, discovering a cable running vertically up the wall behind his back. It was too much to hope this might be a power cable.

“With these minor alterations, you become more docile, and yet so much more adaptable to the environment. Once we have a few thousand of you, you’ll all accept each other, and us as your masters, and then you’ll change each other for us, because you’ll know it is the right thing to do. The change will be like a virus, as you said.”

Peel tried to turn his head to see Nicola again, to remind himself that she really was dead. Coaldale, however, had him pinned in such a way that all he could see was the alien flesh, half mimicking a human and half a monstrosity that shouldn’t exist, not even in nightmares.

“You’re feeling pain, right? Anguish perhaps? I’ve often wondered what these emotions you humans keep going on about must be like. So difficult to live with every day. No wonder your life spans are so brief.”

“Go on,” Peel screamed at Coaldale with a hoarse voice, as his fingers slipped in and out of their tenuous grip on the cable. “Just do it. Kill me and get it over with.”

Coaldale smiled with a mouth crammed with hundreds of competing human teeth. “Of course I will kill you. Slowly, perhaps, to see what I can learn about your strange human emotions. I’ll observe each one you feel as you come to understand that I will eat you in such a way to keep you conscious for many hours.”

Peel gulped, his lungs again compressing a little further. “You are nothing, Coaldale. Scum... you’re a shit... you’re a fucking... pathetic runt of an excuse—”

A viscous tentacle forced its way inside Peel’s mouth and he gagged on the Shoggoth’s unusual petroleum taste.

“Insulting our kind is a waste of time, Peel. I know you want me to kill you quickly, you’d like nothing better. I know you don’t want to feel the pain of the loss of your woman, so you beg for death. You’re trying to bait me, but it won’t work. I just can’t, as you say, ‘empathize’.”

Peel struggled, but the creature was too strong, too much of its slimy matter was inside his mouth, smothering him, and yet he still could breathe through his nose. He was not dead yet, so his hand tightened at the cable behind him, pulled until it snapped.

There was movement behind Coaldale, of several people entering the office. Someone screamed. Another asked for God’s mercy in Spanish.

Coaldale dropped Peel, who fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Five elastic arms like iron rods expanded across the room, crushing the skulls of the men and women who had stumbled upon this already macabre scene.

Peel hit the floor hard. His body bruised and sprained. Some of his ribs had cracked, or had broken, yet he could not feel more relieved.

He had held the cable in his hand, its end dancing with electric sparks where he had pulled it off the wall.

The intruders dealt with, Coaldale came at Peel, so Peel raised what must have been a fifty-thousand-volt conduit, and plunged it into the mass of blubbery flesh of the Shoggoth.

Coaldale screamed with dozens of mouths that erupted across his fake human flesh. He lost his shape as a man and fell away as a semi-liquid flooding the office floor.

Peel turned and fled. He heard Coaldale thrashing and screaming behind him, but he didn’t look back, fearing that the Shoggoth would have already reformed.

As he sprinted, he heard further human screaming, then the rapid footsteps of the scientists fleeing. Now and then, a screaming individual would cut off suddenly. What always followed were the sounds of breaking bones and tearing flesh.

Peel kept running until he was outside, under the moonlit desert. He could still hear Coaldale, berserk now that Peel had electrocuted him, slaughtering and maiming anyone who stumbled into his path.

At the car park, Peel clambered into a four-wheel drive with its keys thankfully still in the ignition, then sped into the desert. For a moment he thought he spied a shape rolling across the sandy plain behind him, but he soon lost it in the gathering dust clouds spewing from the vehicle’s spinning wheels, and Peel wasn’t so sure that he hadn’t imagined it.

Hours later, more than a hundred kilometers from his foe, he finally had the courage to consider a return to help any survivors, but he knew there wouldn’t be any.

——

One week later, Peel sat in a café three blocks from the Washington DC studios of Capital News America. Outside it was snowing. Families were buying last minute Christmas presents together. Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters moved everywhere with permanent smiles etched on their faces.

Inside, he stared into his coffee and told himself that he still would not cry. If he didn’t cry, he would still be in control, he would get through this. Besides, he had to impress the woman seated opposite him. He was working today. He couldn’t become an emotional wreck in front of a potential asset.

“Understand, Lisa,” he explained to the CNA journalist, “that this isn’t easy for me.” She sat close to him towards the rear of the café, taking in his every word. “This is an enormous risk I’m taking.”

He’d secured a corner seat with his back to the wall, to watch the crowds. He had taken every precaution to avoid anyone following him by doubling back upon his route six times. No one could know that he was here.

“It was my conscience that made me contact you,” he lied, for this was a calculated sting. “But before I go further, understand that you cannot use my name in any way.”

She lifted the printout with the website address he had given her. “If this site contains what you say it does, that won’t be a problem. That’s all the evidence I need.”

“Let me show you what’s on it, shall I?”

“You got a feed here?”

Peel powered up his laptop, then motioned that she should sit next to him, with her back also to the wall so other patrons couldn’t see the screen. He didn’t tell her he had several backup recordings of the feed from the Eye, buried in a garden bed on one of Maryland’s public parks, should he ever need it. He could have left all the copies with Plenary and the NSA as they required him to, but that was only inviting someone from INFINITE EYE to make sure his only evidence disappeared forever.

“Understand, if this truth doesn’t reach the public soon, about the US Government’s long-term relationship with alien species and their syndicated intrusions onto our planet, then our politicians will continue to get away with their lies and corruption, again and again, and sacrifice more American lives.” His speech sounded rehearsed to his ears, but that was because it was.

“An expatriate patriot, I would never have guessed you to be one of those?”

“I’m a citizen of the world,” he corrected himself. “This unnatural relationship will affect all people.”

“What exactly are these ‘aliens’ doing to us?”

“Enslaving us, mutating us, experimenting on us, wiping us out altogether. Take your pick.”

“Just show me the images, then I might believe you.”

Peel opened the webpage he had seen in Llano de Chajnantor Observatory, a feed still operational despite his discovery of it seven days ago, so no one had yet guessed at what he might have really uncovered.

They both watched eagerly as a video file loaded. He would not have shown Lisa Knight these images, if she herself had not experienced her own horror, a tear in the cosmic void three years ago in Pennsylvania that had changed her powers of perception forever. Her Code-89 file back at the NSA confirmed that her firsthand experience made her a believer, and that was all that mattered. Peel hoped that she saw what he saw, because the other five people whose lives were completely normal whom he’d tested the image upon had observed only stars and distant galaxies.

When the video began playing Peel looked away, like Heisenberg not wishing to influence the outcome. Yet he could feel its effect taking hold of Lisa Knight. She tightened her knuckles, glistened with cold sweat, and held her breath. For the briefest instance, her eyes appeared to swim in the liquid flesh of her skull...

Three seconds had played before Peel snapped the laptop screen shut.

They restored normalcy.

“What was that?” Knight dribbled. Her skin was ashen and her breath was like ice.

“The center of the universe.”

“It’s alive... conscious... isn’t it?” She spoke like she had gravel in her mouth. No longer was she a professional journalist, but an addict injected with a new drug that made her every previous high vanish into insignificance.

“Lisa, our government is trying to make a deal with it.” Lying was so easy now that she was malleable.

“Deal...?”

Peel grabbed Knight, shook her hard until she focused only upon him, just as Brandon had shaken Peel in Treadwell’s observation station. “Broadcast this, Lisa. Show the world exactly what our leaders are making their beds with.”

Lisa nodded. She was in shock, and this worried Peel. The Eye infliction could still take her if he was not careful with her now, and if she was not careful with the image link later. This was not some computer graphic animation, for its startling effects extended far beyond what any movie studio could imagine. It spoke to their very souls, penetrated their very minds, and defiled them.

After three more cups of coffee thick with sugar and an hour verbalizing into a sympathetic ear, the CNA journalist eventually recovered her composure. Soon she was smiling again, especially when it dawned that she was sitting on the scoop of the millennium. First alien contact, and all the Pulitzer Prizes she could imagine.

It never ceased to amaze Peel what people did for power, recognition and fortune. But while these people remained motivated only for selfish gain, they would always play into his hands.

“Thanks, Harrison,” she shook his hand as she stood to leave. “The world is about to change and for the better, and you and I are going to be a big part of that change.”

“Let’s hope so,” he said with forced warmth. “But keep my name out of it.”

“Of course. You’re a spook, after all.”

Peel hoped that the world would change, but not in the manner that Knight expected. He had betrayed her, but he knew he did so nobly. This was a war and so there would always be causalities, even if in this case the casualty was nothing more than a career.

There was a world to save, after all... his.

——

Terror gripped America, then the rest of the world. It gripped like no other terror had ever gripped it before...

...and then no one accepted it.

——

“One hundred and sixty-seven million people, Peel! One hundred and sixty-seven million!” ranted a furious Treadwell for the hundredth time. “How can we ever counter that kind of influence on INFINITE EYE now?”

She was a dark cloud raging in Plenary’s office. Behind her, Ridley mutely fumed in synchronicity with her outbursts. It was unsaid, but everyone present knew that both NASA employees would soon be out of a job. If they hadn’t resigned by the day’s end, the President of the United States had been very clear in an internal top secret memo that Plenary had showed Peel on the side, that he would fire them. Treadwell still hoped for one last chance to salvage her career, by pinning the hoax on Peel, but she had nothing she could substantiate, that could link the leak back to him.

“They are calling it the hoax of the century, first alien contact and all everyone sees are stars and galaxies. If I ever find out you’re responsible for taking this to the press, Peel...”

Peel said nothing. No matter that he had put a stop to a conspiracy of Shoggoths to enslave and mutate humanity, he had lost the US Government and their corporate backers trillions of dollars in potential creations. The minds of one hundred and sixty-seven million people were too powerful a cosmic force to argue with, even against the will of all Shoggoths on this Earth, and how many that amounted to was anyone’s guess. Coaldale had said hundreds, but that could be a lie.

Every Eye of Infinity viewing outpost that humans knew about now only saw stars and galaxies, because that was what one hundred and sixty-seven million people imagined into being. A situation that wouldn’t repair itself at some later date.

“Plenary!” snapped Treadwell. “I want Peel fired.”

“Tell me again, how exactly is Peel implicated?”

“If you do nothing about this,” she blustered, ignoring Peel’s raging stares, “I’ll make sure he’s manning a remote radar tracking station in Alaska. That’s little enough compensation for a man who should spend the rest of his life languishing in the prisons of Guantanamo.”

Plenary smiled thinly, “Again, on what evidence?”

Peel had worried Treadwell might put pressure on CNA to reveal their source, but she either hadn’t yet thought to exercise that option or had not gotten far. She wasn’t a spook after all, dirty tricks and interrogation were not methods known to her. Even if she learned the truth, there would be no proof. Peel had been very careful to leave no physical trail connecting him to Lisa Knight since his return from the Eye of Infinity.

Treadwell tensed her body, strangled a scream, then gritted her teeth. “It’s not over, Plenary, and neither am I. Our most promising research in decades, stopped dead in its tracks because of the indiscretion of one of your agents, and not even an American agent at that. I can’t ignore this.”

Plenary sat, folded his thick arms behind his head as his chair creaked with his weight. “Professor Treadwell, provide me with the evidence of Peel’s involvement, and he’s out.”

“We could have cured all the world’s diseases, or resolved world hunger. Who knows what was possible? But now it’s all ruined, because of him.”

Plenary would only look at her, silent and still.

Treadwell looked ready to say more, but she held her tongue. With no recourse, she turned to leave. Ridley close behind her like a well-trained lapdog. She hesitated only long enough to eyeball Peel. “Don’t think that our paths won’t cross again, Peel. Don’t think that for a minute.”

“I’m sure they will.”

The scientist paused then, took a moment to reconsider her position, because she looked like she’d been gifted with an idea. She turned to Plenary quickly and said, “I want him tested.”

“Tested for what?” Peel shouted.

“Plenary, you warned me that INFINITE EYE was penetrated by Shoggoths impersonating humans. What if Peel is one of them?”

Every set of eyes in the room turned to him. Every one of them had paled with fear, including Plenary, as if they were expecting him to morph at any moment and crush them like insignificant insects.

“You’ve got to be joking.” Suddenly Peel was feeling very vulnerable, because none of them looked at him like they thought it was funny.

Treadwell said, “I mean, considering Peel’s actions of late, we could construe them as acting in the interest of an alien species.”

Plenary was on the intercom. “Code Firebird, standby mode, my office immediately.”

Peel moved to the corner, felt for his handgun, which he quickly remembered he’d logged with internal security, as he did every day. He wasn’t a Shoggoth.

Within seconds, five guards stormed the office, covered with reflective heat resistance suits lugging flame-throwers, primed and ready. “The target, sir?” said their leader when no obvious threat presented itself. Peel was careful to keep still, so not draw attention to himself.

Plenary wiped the sweat gathering on his forehead. “Just wait a second, we need to test a subject before we incinerate anybody.” He turned to Peel, “I don’t believe you are a Shoggoth, my friend, but we have to be cautious.”

Peel knew only one path was open to him now, but that didn’t mean he had to walk it alone. “Fine, I’ll cooperate on one condition?”

“And that is?”

He pointed to Treadwell. “She gets tested, too. I mean, she’s guilty of letting the multiple-eye infections get out of hand. That, too, we could construe as being traitorous.”

“You’re insane, Peel. I’m not agreeing to this.”

“Actually, Peel has a point.” Plenary turned to the armed security detail. “Take these two to the test chamber, run them simultaneously.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is unbelievable.” Treadwell fumed, for she was not an individual accustomed to being treated with such mistrust. Peel thought her too emotional to be a Shoggoth and realized that he was being spiteful. Still, he’d played his card now, so they’d both just have to see this through, and then hopefully go their separate ways forever.

The guards led Peel and Treadwell beyond a door denied to Peel since his employment with the NSA. Plenary accompanied them, while other officers escorted Ridley to a briefing room where he would have to wait under guard until the tests concluded. All the while, the guards watched Peel and Treadwell with a degree of healthy fear. If either were Shoggoths, they could turn on their captors, becoming the rapid-fire and efficient killing machines the Pentapods designed them to be.

Only numbers marked the doors lining the corridors on the other side of the restricted door, and no indications to what lay beyond them. After passing a dozen doors, the guards led Treadwell and Peel through a thick, blast proof hatch, the kind associated with the inside of a submarine.

The room that greeted them contained a bank of instrumentation controls, computer monitors, and towards the back were various cells. They could see the interiors of the cells through thick armored glass. A technician in a laboratory coat and thick glasses trembled momentarily when he saw them. He quickly gained his composure as the cold professional he was. “Who’s the Shoggoth?”

“We have two suspected ‘positives’ impersonating humans.” Plenary pointed to Peel and Treadwell.

The technician nodded. “Okay, well ask them to strip to their underwear.”

“You’ve got to be joking,” complained Treadwell. “Someone very powerful will hear about this, and then your career will be over instead of his, Plenary.”

“Just like yours, I take it?”

“Any fillings?” interrupted the technician. “Do either of you have metal fillings, or other metal implants?”

“No.” Peel stripped away his outer garments, handed over cell phone, watch, wallet, pass cards. Treadwell remained still, looking flustered and frustrated. Peel said to her, “The man asks, Treadwell, because you can contain a Shoggoth in a powerful magnetic field.”

“Oh.”

Within minutes they were both in their underwear and in separate cells. They could see each other through two layers of super-thick glass, with Plenary, the technician and the security detail in between.

“It works like this,” explained the NSA technician. “Each cell you are inside is now generating a powerful magnetic field, which will cause your deception to fail should you move too close to the cell walls, if you are Shoggoths. We’ve discovered they have trouble maintaining integrity in such a flux. So there would be no human Shoggoths on Jupiter.” He alone laughed at his joke. Clearing his throat, he said, “Second, the magnetic field will contain the high temperature flames we’ll use to incinerate you, if you fail the next test.”

“What test is that?” said Treadwell loudly, her voice transmitting through a public address system linking all cells and the observers outside.

Peel remembered when he had shot Coaldale, how the human-impersonator had never once bled, despite the dozens of bullets he put into him. “Blood test, Treadwell. Shoggoths don’t bleed.”

“Mr. Peel is correct. You’ll both notice that you have blood collection kits inside with you. Just prick yourself on the plastic needle tip, and then pass the sample through the slot in the cell door, please.”

Peel wasted no time. He wasn’t a Shoggoth, so he had nothing to fear. The sooner he was out of here, the better.

When both blood samples were ready, there were a few tense moments while the technician subjected their samples to several simple tests.

“Okay, Treadwell is clear,” said the technician after several minutes of tense silence.

“At last.” Released, Treadwell dressed.

“What about Peel?” asked Plenary. “What’s the delay with him?”

“Just give me a minute, sir. Something is not quite right here.”

Again, all eyes turned to Peel. He could see the fear that never went away, distrust born at the very elemental level of their beings. Human’s fear of Shoggoths, it seemed, was as primordial as an animal’s fear of fire.

“I’m not a Shoggoth!” Peel pleaded.

Treadwell said, “You could be. How do you really know? Who’s saying the Shoggoths can’t make their own kind believe they are humans until the moment they need to know.”

“That’s just being paranoid,” countered Plenary. “Isn’t it?”

Peel clenched his fist, ground his teeth. He wasn’t a Shoggoth. His own people were playing a cruel game with him. This was ludicrous, insulting, or was it?

Coaldale had forced his wet, gasoline-scented Shoggothian matter down his throat. Peel had tasted him. The barbed tongues had grazed him. Perhaps the Shoggoth equivalence of cells had merged with Peel’s own biochemistry. Perhaps that was the anomaly the technician was reading. He might not be a Shoggoth yet, but was growing into one. Perhaps Coaldale had planned this all along.

He remembered his time in Antarctica, when he traveled through a wormhole with a Shoggoth, and that Shoggoth had merged with another man. The reversal of time supposedly cleared Peel of any Shoggoth infection he had endured, but perhaps the alien biochemistry still lingered in his cells…

Losing control, Peel pounded the glass partition to no effect. This was nothing more than paranoid, depressed pondering. He knew the truth. “I’m not a fucking Shoggoth!”

The head of the security detail turned to Plenary, “Shall we incinerate it, sir?”

Plenary raise a hand. “Give the man a minute.”

“It’s okay,” interrupted the technician. “It was a contaminated slide.”

“With what?” Plenary shouted at the man, disbelieving his ineptitude.

“Um, something terrestrial. Bacteria maybe.”

Plenary fumed. “A computer that accidentally deals out false positives is nothing to be casual about.”

The technician didn’t respond other than to test Peel again. A few tense moments passed before the technician said, “Everything is okay, Peel is human.”

Treadwell was the only person who looked disappointed.

——

Only after the guards escorted Treadwell and Ridley from the NSA building did Peel realize how tense he was. He felt violated, abused. Calm on the outside, just beneath his skin, he was screaming. His two near-death encounters at the hands of Coaldale, and Nicola’s bloody demise, were all he could focus upon.

“This isn’t over,” Peel said to Plenary when they returned to his boss’s office.

Plenary was stone faced, unhappy even.

“Were you hoping I was a Shoggoth, too?”

“You know Treadwell will end up on several boards of the many defense multinationals contracted to the Pentagon? You’ve made yourself, and this department, a very powerful enemy.”

Peel nodded. She could prove nothing, but leaking of INFINITE EYE information to the press was exactly the tactic Peel would apply. He’d skirted close to behaving treasonously.

“Whoever did it—”

Plenary raised an eyebrow.

“Whoever did it,” Peel stuck with his story, “you know it was the right thing to do.”

Plenary nodded. “You realize the path you are following; you’ll never make friends in public office?”

“Honestly, I don’t care.”

The big man scratched his head. “No, I don’t think you do.”

“What about Coaldale? Thought about how we take him out? Now that I’ve seen beyond those previously denied doors, I think you’ve got some serious weapons being developed down there I could use.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Peel, but for the moment I don’t want you going after Coaldale.”

“You’re joking?”

“I want him under surveillance, to see who he talks to, hoping to identify more of his kind.”

Peel nodded, agreeing with the tactic even if he was emotionally in a very different place. “Then I want in.”

“No way.”

“You can’t deny me this.”

“You want revenge, Peel. I can see it. Right now, revenge is easier for you to feel than loss, but feeling your loss now will be better for you in the long run, trust me.”

The Australian felt water gathering in his fiery eyes. The last thing he wanted was to become teary in front of his boss. He didn’t want to break down at all. He was still in control and wanted to keep it that way. So what if he was angry? He deserved to be.

“Harrison, I’m sorry about Nicola.”

Peel didn’t want to hear sympathy. He was about to tell Plenary this, but choked on his words.

“Take a week off. In fact, take three.”

“Joss—”

“That’s an order. We may know that what happened with INFINITE EYE is for the best, but this incident will attract investigation, and I want you far from here when it does.”

Peel slammed his fist on Plenary’s desk. “No sir, I can’t do that. If I take time off... I might never come back.”

He knew the dark directions his mind was wandering towards. Given the chance to ponder, his thoughts would send him into a negative spiral that could only lead to severe depression, and that could lead to a much darker place he never wanted to give words to. He remembered what he had hoped Coaldale would do to him, back in the Atacama, when he lost everything. Work would distract him from such thoughts.

“This is not optional.”

“If I don’t come back to work, then they win, again.”

“They win if you stay. I don’t need you wound up ready to explode. I need you recovered.”

Peel was about to argue, but he knew Plenary had thought through this conundrum better than Peel could, right now.

“You need to rest, with what you must be feeling.”

“It’s just grief, Joss, simple grief.”

“Why don’t you return to Australia, catch up with friends and family? I think I could wrangle clearance for that.”

Peel was about to argue, when an idea struck, remembering a recent conversation about Australia many weeks ago, in Florida. “You really want me to take time off?”

“I’m insisting on it.”

Peel’s nod was slight.

As he stepped outside into the empty corridor, he realized how utterly alone he really was, and that he would always be alone, because his work required it of him. If he had chosen a family life with Nicola, there would have been no world left for them to share, INFINITE EYE would have seen to that. There had never been a choice.

When he was about to shut the door behind him, Plenary called to him. “Hold on, Peel, there’s one more thing.”

“Yes?” His eyes were wet again.

Plenary was smiling now. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, or Nicola. You both did a damn fine job, a damn fine job!”

It was too much for Peel. He fled from the office, locked himself in the nearest unoccupied meeting room, and for the first time in his adult life, cried silently.

——

A light rain like mist was falling. The air smelled of damp grass and hummed with singing insects. Far North Queensland was as humid as Peel remembered it from his Army days. It was late morning, and he sat behind the wheel of his four-wheel drive, parked with the engine idling just off the isolated country road and hidden behind tropical bush trees where no one would see him. Normally he would have had the air-conditioning running, but he needed the windows down, and so he sweated. He didn’t mind. It was nice to be back in Australia, feeling it.

Peel recognized the next sedan that sped past immediately. He sped after it, spraying mud as he took off. Within seconds he collided with the sedan, sending it into a spin. They both ground to a halt, for the impact had been far more powerful than expected. The lighter vehicle took it worse, turning in a complete circle once before colliding with a ditch. It was all over in seconds.

Shaken, feeling a little woozy from adrenalin and post-accident shock, Peel clambered from his vehicle, lifting his silenced Glock 9mm in his numb hands as he did.

He staggered to within a few meters of the crashed sedan. Only then did the driver, his head bleeding, look up, noticing Peel.

“What the hell do you think you’re up to?” Martin Ridley yelled in his thick Southern accent. He fumbled with his seatbelt, but it had locked up, pinning him. Only then did he realize who had run him off the road. “Peel? What the hell are you doing here? Why the hell did you run me off the road?”

Peel raised his handgun, pointed it between Ridley’s eyeballs. He had no intention of killing or harming Ridley further, but he intended to scare the man.

“Peel? Oh my God, please don’t kill me. Please, don’t!”

Earlier this morning Peel had snuck into Ridley’s hotel, where he squirted Imodium into his wife’s morning juice. The technique had worked as planned, for Ridley was out and about alone, headed for a golf course advertised in a brochure Peel had conveniently left out Ridley’s resort hotel room yesterday for him to find.

Ridley paled. He knew he couldn’t escape his tangled seatbelt; knew how completely he was at Peel’s mercy. “What do you want, Peel? What the hell do you want?”

Peel chambered the first round, cocked the hammer.

“Someone in your team has to know.” Peel’s words tasted like ice in his mouth. “I figure you’re as good as anyone to start with.”

“Start with what?” Ridley shook. “Start with what, Peel? What do you want me to tell you? For God’s sake, what do you want to know?”

This wasn’t over, not for him. Not for anyone who still lived this day.

“What do I want you to tell me? I want to know where I can find Coaldale.”

The Temporal Deception

With C.J. Henderson

Far North Queensland, Australia

Sweat pouring off his brow, Harrison Peel braked and then sped into the curve of yet another sharp turn along the cliff-hugging road. His left-side tires screeched as he pushed up the gears, braked again, then spun the wheel just tight enough to take the next turn at sped but not fast enough to send the vehicle into a spin.

“What the hell are you doing?” exclaimed Martin Ridley, rigid with fear in the passenger seat beside Peel as the tropical rain forest blurred past them. “You’ll kill us both!”

“I won’t kill us,” Peel hissed through clenched teeth as he took the next curve even faster. “But there is something out there that wants to.”

“What?”

“We’re being hunted.”

“Hunted?”

The next bend appeared faster than Peel expected. He hit the brakes in time, but too hard, sending their vehicle into the beginning of a spin. Only clever foot work and precision steering saved them from rolling. Hanging branches scrapped at the paint from the hired four-wheel drive, reminding Peel how close they had just come to crashing. The realization made him grimace in strained relief, but it did not slow his speed. Gagging at the same thought, Ridley repeated—

“H-Hunted?”

Earlier Peel had spotted the predator hiding in the trees. The thing might have taken the shape of a young, fit woman, but it moved too fast, plowed too powerfully through the undergrowth to be human. Flattening the saplings and ferns in its path, limbs stretched like coils of wire, it swung its mass from overhanging branches in its ever-increasing effort to catch them.

“By who?”

“Didn’t say ‘who.’ Said ‘thing.’ As in a Shoggoth, Ridley. Understand me. We’re being hunted by a thing. A thing called a Shoggoth.”

Reaching another straight, Peel accelerated, speeding as fast as possible. He was pushing a hundred kilometers per hour in a spot where an average driver would have done sixty, where those in a hurry might risk seventy-five. The Shoggoth had been clever, waited until they were on a steep decent along a cliff-edged, zig-zagging road. On their left, a drop of twenty meters would kill both men if they rolled. The perfect spot for an ambush.

With a jarring thud, the roof crumpled. Peel felt the weight of the vehicle increase. Their center of gravity thrown off, their vehicle careened. Ridley squealed. Peel clenched his teeth, all his attention focused on getting the vehicle back under control. He had no time for panic. He knew what had jumped a hundred meters and landed dead-on target, knew he had only seconds to keep them both alive.

The Shoggoth — claws piercing metal — clung to their roof easily, swinging its weight against Peel’s steering. The center of gravity shifted again as a misshapen fist shattered the windscreen. A second and then a third limb appeared. They tore Peel’s door from its hinges, then flung it high and fast into the sky. Peel forced himself to ignore everything around him, keeping his foot firm and heavy on the accelerator. It was the only way to keep their vehicle from flipping over, which was, of course, the objective of the thing on their roof. The monster could walk away from a high-speed car crash. A human could not.

Another fist shattered Ridley’s passenger window, an amorphous shape-shifting mass reaching inside. Peel slammed the brakes, the smell of burning rubber flooding the air as they ground to a halt. The Shoggoth, half-female, half a mass of black protoplasmic jellied flesh — mouths, teeth, eyes and tentacles — was flung from the vehicle. Even skidding across the bitumen, however, it was reforming itself. Laughing, grinning with intent, the horror pulled itself erect on two newly formed, perfect legs. Not waiting around to see what it might do on its new legs, Peel sped up toward the horror. Running down the alien monstrosity, Peel did not bother to even check the damage he might have done in his one surviving mirror. He merely drove fast and then faster.

Ridley said nothing.

Peel looked at him. The American had lost color. Glass protruded from multiple punctures in his neck and shoulder, and he was bleeding profusely. Peel reached out, trying to find a wound and plug it. For his efforts, he cut himself on an impaled blade. Peel had no choice but to let the man bleed.

“Don’t you give up on me, Ridley!”

Another corner came up on them from nowhere. Peel braked, spun the wheel hard, shifted down then up the gears without conscious thought, and accelerated again. In the next straight he glimpsed the Shoggoth-woman.

The thing sprinted along the cliff face above them and then scrambled down that shear rock like a monkey, swinging forward from tree branches to increase its speed. Running it down had done little to nothing to slow it. It was still fast. Impossibly fast. Faster than they could drive.

Ridley made a gurgling noise.

The man was a goner, Peel knew. He’d seen similar wounds during an active tour of duty in Somalia with the Australian Army. Later again in the Congo.

“Ridley!” Peel slapped the man’s face to get his attention. “That thing is hunting us because I’m hunting its master. A man… no, a Shoggoth, called Byrd Coaldale.”

Ridley slumped, his eyes lost focus.

“Ridley! Where the hell can I find Coaldale?”

“Volkov…” Ridley whispered. The hiss came equally from a bubbling gash in his throat as from his lips.

“Volkov?”

“Pavel… Volkov… Port… Harcourt.”

Ridley’s head slumped forward. A wound opened and blood gushed like water from a hose, smeared what remained of the windshield in red. Peel felt another thump and then heard tearing as metal ground against metal. Sparks filled the air. A reverberation shook the cabin as the rear of the four-wheel drive imploded. One wheel popped, vanishing like a missile into the green undergrowth. At that point the steering wheel rebelled, forcing Peel’s arms to turn with it. The car spun. As inertia dispelled gravity, and he fell into the illusion of slowed time.

Peel’s rational mind fought to survive. His perilous grip upon the fast-moving death machine was pointless, and the next cliff face careened closer with each incremental second. Using the moment to his advantage, Peel snapped from his stupor.

Releasing his seat belt, he snatched an incendiary grenade from under his seat. Pulling the pin, Peel dropped it on the floor while rolling from the vehicle. He slammed against the roadside hard, the sudden impact winding him, and hurt like hell. Thankfully he hit grass, otherwise the impact would have torn his skin to shreds. That did not stop bruises and lacerations from instantly exploding as pain nodules across his body.

When he stopped rolling, from a corner of his eye he saw his vehicle disappear over the cliff with the Shoggoth half-immersed into the chassis, but not before the grenade detonated.

The light was momentarily blinding. The Shoggoth had been preoccupied with extracting itself but it was too slow. An explosive temperature of 2,800oC consumed it, boiling it into alien vapors. At least, that was Peel’s hope. Judging by the inhuman squeals that silenced with the detonation, Peel gave himself better than even chances that he had won the day.

Forcing himself to his feet, Peel grimaced, hurting all over but thankful that his only serious injury were two dislocated fingers in his left hand. Staggering to the cliff edge, he surveyed the damage.

What remained of his hired vehicle had disappeared into the tropical foliage. He knew exactly where it was, however, by the thick black smoke it was producing, a trail blazing into the hot tropical sky. A second and third explosion from the wreckage startled Peel. Then a tree toppled, taking another two trees with it. As they did, he remembered he had brought several incendiary grenades with him. The heat of the explosion would have set them all off.

Peel allowed himself a brief smirk of satisfaction. Then, with his good hand, he drew his Glock 9mm automatic from his shoulder holster and pointed it toward the undergrowth. He waited fifteen minutes until convinced nothing was moving below to make sure he had destroyed the creature. That it was as dead as Martin Ridley.

When the rational part of his brain reminded him how ineffective his sidearm would be against a Shoggoth, he holstered it.

“Fucker,” he hissed.

Peel snapped his two dislocated fingers back into place, screaming to the bursting point of his lungs. Then, he simply began walking.

——

Gulf of Guinea, Rivers State, Nigeria

With only the light of a full moon for visibility and the GPS tracker on her satellite phone for guidance, Joan de Molina pushed the throttle of her speedboat to maximum. Cutting through the choppy tropical seas, she spied her target ahead, a WGI Petroleum oil rig. The tower was lit with lights of many hues and colors, but none as bright as the rig’s gas flare. In her mind, the spewing flame represented ridiculous waste. It was a fuel source the local Nigerians could have easily tapped to power their homes. But the oil company deemed it, at best, a commodity not worthy of export and, at worst, as a rival power source that needed no encouragement. Thus, they left it to burn into nothing but damaging greenhouse gases. De Molina considered the beacon as one last signpost justifying her actions.

Even at four in the morning, the platform was fully operational. Tool-pushers, drillers, roustabouts and mud engineers worked the well heads, ensured that the Delta Crude always flowed. The woman had been counting on most of the managers being asleep at this hour, but hitches, she reminded herself, occurred within every plan. As she grew closer, de Molina cut the engines and broke out a set of oars. The noise of the rig almost guaranteed they would not notice her, but hers was not the type of occupation where its members prospered by leaving details to chance.

Once beneath the main deck, the woman anchored her speedboat to a jacket leg. Several sharks cut through the murky waters, their fins like razors slicing waves. Catching sight of them in the corner of her eye, her subconscious reminded her not to trail a hand in the water, or worse, fall in.

Once secured, de Molina quickly checked her belongings. They included black fatigues light intensifier goggles, lock picks, glass cutter, head lamp, waterproof bags, digital camera, commando knife, and a Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun.

Yes, she smiled to herself, she was as ready for anything as one can be.

The jacket leg at which she had docked possessed a service ladder, and why she had picked it. A nimble climber, de Molina made a careful rotation of the leg along a brine-soaked strut, then ascended to the main deck. With the plan of the rig already memorized, she quietly slipped past the drill workers and into the unoccupied Offshore Installation Manager’s office. It was unlocked, which was expected for a door twenty miles from the nearest coast.

She moved first on the room’s single filing cabinet. In under ten seconds, she had the lock sprung and top drawer’s contents spread out before her. Switching from light intensifiers to head torch, she scanned the documents until she found what she had come for: MEND — Goswill Osoba.

MEND was the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, a local Nigerian militant group. The organization was engaged in fighting a dirty and protracted war against the Nigerian military, and their multinational oil company allies, hoping to secure a portion of the profits disappearing from their country, and in protest against the pollution destroying the fishing industry of the Niger Delta.

De Molina did not blame them for their war. She had seen firsthand what the oil companies had done to ruin Nigeria’s Rivers State. Polluted waters had killed agricultural industries, causing thousands of the locals to starve or live with constant malnutrition. Corrupt soldiers doubling as mercenaries for the corporations gladly accepted pay far higher than their government salaries to keep the locals in line through any means possible.

The oil companies never gave industry jobs to the indigenous population at the insistence of the local governments. Cash bought leisure. Leisure gave people time to think. No, if all the money available from the oil companies were to continue to flow to a country’s corrupt government officials and military leaders, its people had to remain poor. And desperate. In Nigeria, at that moment, children as young as eight would kill each other with machetes — or handguns when they found them — simply for the opportunity to sell a single barrel of misplaced oil.

No, thought de Molina, she did not mind fighting on the side of MEND at all.

It had been MEND who had hired her through an enigmatic Moroccan named Jamal Alhazred, a silent sponsor of their operations. They needed to uncover the dirty deals between Westmorton Global Industries Petroleum and a splinter group of MEND led by ‘Captain’ Godswill Osoba. WGI and this radical faction should have been sworn enemies, and yet they were working an agenda for mutual benefit. But for whose benefit, and who would suffer as a result? All Alhazred knew for certain was that since they had struck the deal, many men, women and children from MEND families had vanished.

De Molina scanned the files, photographing each as she went. They were mostly reports and memos, predominantly from WGI Nigerian General Manager, Gerard Fischer, to and about Osoba. Fischer had bought Osoba a townhouse in Port Harcourt, no doubt a bribe. Another name, Dr. Pavel Volkov, came up several times. One memo listed him as a WGI research scientist, but what he was researching? None of the files were clear on that. Then the subtext of what she was reading hit her, and de Molina’s smile went slightly wide.

“Just,” she whispered to no one, “when I think there are no surprises left.”

Osoba was selling his own people — men, women, and children — to Volkov’s research project. In return, Fischer paid the general manager huge bribes, the equivalent of tens of millions in US dollars. Despite uncovering this horror, de Molina felt comfort in knowing she was one step closer to providing Alhazred with answers and evidence.

Then, without warning, the door burst open and two WGI security guards filed into the room brandishing South African Sanna-77 machine pistols. They were professionals. If de Molina resisted, they would not miss, and they had the only exit securely covered. The woman gave them a dazzling smile, realizing instantly they approached at the moment the files had distracted her not to notice their arrival. Deciding to see what happened next, she raised her arms in defeat and allowed the guards to relieve her of her weapons and other possessions.

“Secure, sir,” said the first security guard in a thick South African accent.

A tall, pale-skinned man in his early fifties with embarrassingly thinning hair entered. De Molina immediately recognized him as Gerard Fischer. This did not surprise her as she was in his office. Fischer preferred working offshore instead of in the capital of Rivers State, Port Harcourt, where the threat of kidnapping by MEND rebels always loomed. Like everyone else on the rig, he wore bright orange overalls for visibility, emblazoned with the sphinx-headed WGI logo.

“Bind her,” he commanded in a British accent that sent the first security guard into action, who produced plastic cable ties. De Molina held out her hands in front, before anyone got the idea that it might be preferable to cuff her from behind. Luckily, no one thought of that.

Fisher went straight to the files de Molina had been handling, ‘tsking’ as he read what she had read. “You’re in a lot of trouble, young lady.”

De Molina said nothing, strenuously resisting the urge to laugh. A fourth man entered the office, huge, hairless and pudgy, with glasses so thick it gave the impression that he had no eyes. Despite his bulk, the man moved with ease and power. De Molina shuddered involuntarily at the sight of him.

“Volkov,” Fischer nodded to the fat man. “You were right.”

Volkov produced a grin as horrible as the rest of him, a smile that belonged to the sharks circling the rig, waiting for the next easy meal. “Of course I’m right,” he snapped.

“So you’re Pavel Volkov,” de Molina spoke for the first time since her arrival on the rig. She could not place his peculiar accent any more exactly than somewhere-from-Eastern-Europe. “I’ve read all about you.” Her eyes went to the files in Fischer’s hands.

Volkov’s grin grew bigger. Impossibly bigger.

“And you are Joan de Molina, a.k.a. the Pirate Queen.”

“So you’ve heard of me.”

“Of course, an international jewel thief under the employ of Jamal Alhazred. Now, how is my old ‘friend?’ I haven’t seen him, since, oh my… back in Egypt.”

De Molina shuddered for Volkov’s benefit as she asked, “How do you know all this?”

“An excellent question, my dear.” He turned to the security guards as he continued talking. “What will bother you even more is how you will lead me to my other nemesis, Major Harrison Peel, and aid me in doing away with him once and for all, despite all your efforts not to.”

She did not know anyone named Peel, but kept the fact to herself for the time being.

“Drug her, I want her untouched.”

De Molina weighed her options in an instant. She did not like the idea of being unconscious in the care of the men there in the office. But their obvious fear of Volkov led her to believe she would be safe enough. As one guard held her while another produced a syringe, she decided there might be more she needed to know. As the second guard drew a clear liquid from a medical vial, he turned to Volkov and, guessing de Molina’s weight, asked, “Fifty kilograms?”

Volkov nodded. De Molina tensed, playing the part of someone frightened and out of their league. She could see that almost everyone was taken in by her performance. Everyone except Volkov. As they injected the serum into a vein, she became instantly drowsy. And, in the moment of time in between consciousness and insensibility, she saw something within the pudgy man’s eyes she recognized.

“You… wha—” was all she could manage before passing into unconsciousness.

_____

Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria

Seventy-two hours later, one tropical jungle replaced another as the Air Nigeria aircraft carrying Peel circled Port Harcourt International Airport on route from Lagos. Peel studied the vast flat green landscape from his window seat of the Embraer E-190 aircraft as it ran through the last checks before the landing approach.

Although Nigeria was a country familiar to Peel, the Rivers State was not. His subconscious kept his attention concentrated on that which lay outside his window. It was second nature to Peel to study any unfamiliar terrain, and his curious glances focused on an eastern tributary of the Niger River winding through the swamps and lush rain forests. He knew that multinational oil refineries on the edge of decrepit townships could hide in the dense jungles. Oil slicks marred the otherwise scenic Niger River Delta while acrid fires burned from pipelines punctured illegally for siphoning of the black gold. This was the Delta Crude: the battle grounds of African pastoralists, multinational corporations, private military companies and disgruntled militias. A war zone in every sense of the word.

Peel took one last look and then closed his eyes to grab a few last moments of rest before touchdown.

Fifteen minutes later the aircraft was on the tarmac and the passengers were disembarking. Peel was amongst the first through the cabin door and onto the blistering taxiway. The heat and humidity soon had him short of breath and drenched with sweat.

Having completed customs in Lagos, he quickly gathered his luggage at the carousel. Only then was he met by his contact, Sergeant Moses Zouga, a private military contractor who had worked alongside Peel many times in the past.

“Harrison Peel, my main man. Sowa? How are you?” The spritely Nigerian gripped Peel’s hand hard, pumped an energetic handshake while slapping Peel on the back.

“Moses Zouga, good to see you too.”

“Still looking bad-assed,” said the contractor. “Still shaving your head, which improves your look, but the bruising and cuts… what the fuck happened to you?”

“Car accident,” Peel replied cagily.

Zouga raised an eyebrow. “Haven’t seen you since the Congo. In retrospect, I believe you looked just as bad-assed back then. And possibly, just as beaten up. Perhaps you need some driving lessons. Or maybe training wheels.”

Peel smiled, forced down memories of another jungle battle he cared not to remember, against yet another nightmarish hell-thing he had barely defeated. “That’s possible. For now, if you don’t mind, let’s just say the Congo’s a time I’d rather forget.”

“Makana. ‘Fair enough,’ as you Aussies say. But you did not tell me that they dishonorably discharged you, or that you now consult to the NSA.”

“What is this Moses,” asked Peel, maintaining his smile, “twenty questions?”

“Just keeping myself abreast of developments. You are, my friend, a most difficult man to keep track of, or to understand why such bad, bad things keep happening to him.”

“Perhaps I should have gotten myself an honest job, like you.”

“As a PMC?” Zouga roared. “And here I thought you shadow types were well-informed.” When Peel merely spread his hands apart disarmingly, his contact smiled, saying, “A private military contractor is not an honest job. You are a strange man, Major, but I still like you. Come, I am parked out front.”

The Nigerian’s mode of transport was an armored four-wheel drive, less than a year old, but with many scratches and a few brutal scorch marks. Peel also noticed several bullet holes in the rear glass, causing him to raise a questioning eyebrow.

“Don’t ask.”

Peel shrugged in response and opened the passenger door. “I thought this was an armored car.”

“You ever heard or armor-piercing rounds, my friend?”

Peel grinned. “Life has its challenges.”

“You’re telling me.”

Once inside the vehicle, Zouga drove fast towards the center of Port Harcourt, only slowed by the congested traffic. Diesel smells were powerful and everywhere. Peel watched the hundreds of Nigerian men, women and children walking the streets or riding rusted bicycles. Some sold wares from makeshift lean-tos, offering little more than overcooked corn or metal scraps pulled from rubbish piles. Beggars squatted on the curbs of busy roads, holding out thin hands in sad hope for a coin or two. Lush green vegetation from grasses to banana trees grew everywhere, giving Peel something to look at other than human despair.

In their stop-start route through the city, Zouga repeatedly blared his horn, jumping his vehicle forward whenever the slightest opportunity presented itself. In most any Western culture, the way he barely gave those in the street time to get out of his way would have quickly led to his arrest. But, as Peel knew, size mattered in Africa. Bigger, faster vehicles always had the right of way.

“I hear that your latest employers, America’s National Security Agency, they do not know you’re here.”

“The NSA will know I’m here.”

“But not authorizing this expedition?”

“You’re well informed.”

“My friend, I may no longer be Nigerian Armed Forces, but I still maintain contact with the SSS.”

Peel nodded. Zouga was referring to Nigeria’s domestic intelligence organization, the State Security Service, with a reputation for brutality against the people of the River States. “If the SSS know I’m here, they can’t be the only ones.”

“Then, you are not denying that you’ve gone rogue?”

“No, I’m not. Of course, I’m not confirming it, either.”

“Always the same.”

Zouga laughed, allowing his face to settle into a wide, toothy grin before suddenly speeding forward through an opening in the traffic. As they barely avoided killing several more pedestrians, including one woman balancing a tray of freshly picked bananas on her head, the Nigerian confided, “You know, when we worked together all those years ago, back when you were but an infant with your Army’s Intelligence Corps, I used to believe the things you told me, you know. Those many and varied things you trained me to do.”

“I have a feeling this is going somewhere.”

“One of those things you taught me was to trust nothing, not even what you said.”

“Then why bother asking me why I’m really here?”

“Because, Sergeant Zouga adores the sound of his own voice.” As Peel chuckled, the Nigerian told him, “Hey, you are paying me money. Good money. And Sergeant Zouga, he loves the money, because it gets him the girls and the respect.”

“Those are good reasons.”

“Damn right they are. Now turn around and get the bag from the back seat. You should find all the wonderful things for which you asked.”

Peel did as instructed. Opening the large black satchel, he found an assortment of requested items he would have had more than a little trouble buying alone, including a Barretta 92 9mm sidearm, military fatigues and boots, a set of satellite phones, incendiary grenades, night vision goggles, and the most important item of all, a Barrett M82 sniper rifle stripped down to its component parts. Opening an ammunition case, Peel withdrew a bullet ensuring it was silver tipped.

“I take it these are Mk211 rounds? Armor-piercing incendiary bullets?”

“Do you know how much all this is costing you?”

Peel nodded. He was not so concerned about the costs. During his Australian Army days in the Intelligence Corps, Peel had operated undercover in Africa for many years, posing as an arms dealer so he might identify militant groups with aspirations for careers in global terrorism. That was when he had first come into contact with Moses Zouga.

The two had worked similar agendas and found that pooling resources proved beneficial to both parties. They had secured a great deal of illicit money during that time, blood diamond money mostly. They returned the majority to the authorities, as expected of them. But the pair had also put a substantial amount aside. Corruption was a natural part of life in Africa. Zouga had no qualms about pocketing his share because that was the only way he knew how to get ahead in his country and support his wife and children.

Peel saved his cut to establish various dummy bank accounts to fund future operations, should he ever need to go it alone, as he was at that moment. He held those funds in offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands and the Cook Islands known only to himself. With a little over two hundred thousand Euros left after purchasing all this equipment and time from Zouga, Peel felt he still had enough money should he ever need to retire suddenly into obscurity, or run his own clandestine operations against Extra-terrestrial Sentient Beings. ESBs as the US and allied intelligence community called them. Code-89 entities were their other name.

Peel did not have to remind himself that Shoggoths were Code-89 entities.

“I know your services don’t come cheap.”

“Nothing does in the Delta.” The Nigerian pointed to the various petroleum company billboards hanging from decrepit hotels or office buildings. They passed one for WGI Petroleum, tag-lined ‘Fuel for the Future.’

Zouga said, “You know, there are actually two types of zebras in Africa.”

Peel could see where this joke was going, but played along anyway. “Really, I didn’t know that.”

“That’s right, my friend. The first is the black zebra with the white stripes. And the second is the white zebra with––”

“With the black stripes. Very funny, Sergeant.”

“All I am saying is there is only one problem in the Rivers State, and that is oil. No matter which way you dress it up, that is the way things are. This is one of the richest cities in the country, but most of its citizens have nothing. The petroleum companies come here, drill the oil, pay off token local leaders and businesses while they pollute the Delta, ignore calls to employ locals, and destroy the landscape with their misguided environmental management plans. So I am betting your problem has connections with the Delta Crude.”

Peel had never heard Zouga speak so passionately about the welfare of his people. He looked to his old friend, almost expecting the sergeant to burst into laughter, perhaps trying out a less obvious joke. When he did not, Peel responded quietly, “I’m not sure yet.”

“That’s all right. I am sure.”

“But you work for the multinationals, Zouga, as a security contractor. You’re already involved.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t like to stick it to them behind their back.”

Peel nodded. It was an attitude he could understand. He stared out at the passing landscape of yet another African city that looked only half-completed but already spoiled by rubbish littered everywhere. Despite the surface’s decrepit appearance, however, he could not help but love the continent’s vibrancy. The smiles on the faces of adults and children on the street, that men held hands unashamedly in public, that no one ever seemed in a particular rush about anything, or ever thought that they should be. It was these small but telling differences that drew him back again and again, a straightforward viewpoint on life that he missed dearly whenever he returned to the Western world.

“So,” Peel asked, scratching at his shaved scalp, “does the name Pavel Volkov mean anything to you?”

Zouga laughed loudly. “Man, do I know Pavel Volkov? I told you you’re here because of the oil.”

“He works in the industry?”

Zouga nodded. “Volkov is a shit man. A real big elephant-sized shit.”

“Who exactly is he?”

“He is the bad-ass Technical Manager for WGI Petroleum, that’s who he is. Volkov likes the direct approach of insuring that local insurgent groups, such as MEND, don’t mess with his operations. And, he is, unfortunately, very good at his job.”

“And you know this because…”

“Because he even scares bad-assed mercenaries like me.”

It was Peel’s turn to laugh. “I thought nothing scared the great Zouga.”

“Most of the time… yes… this bad-ass would agree with you. But with Volkov… I don’t know how to explain it. It was like what we saw in Somalia, but worse. Far worse.”

In Perth, while waiting for his flight across the Indian Ocean, Peel had conducted some research of his own on Pavel Volkov. The man had a violently tainted history, one connected to the deaths of well over a hundred people, directly and indirectly.

“So, what you’re telling me is you like the word ‘bad-ass.’”

“It is a good word, Peel. Can be used to describe many situations and people I don’t like.”

“Can it describe how you’ll get me close to Volkov?”

“Already done, we’re on our way to meet him now.”

“Meet him?”

“Perhaps I should say ‘observe’ him… from a distance.”

Peel raised an eyebrow. “What about that armored car you promised me, which I’ve already paid you for, by the way?”

Zouga shrugged, rolled his eyes in wide circles.

“This contraption? This thing with the bullet holes?”

“You aren’t loaded with cash, Major. This one was written off by its owners, so it’s cheap.”

“I can tell you why.”

“It is all you can afford, when you’ve gone rogue.”

“Rub it in, why don’t you.”

“Look upon the world with a smile on your face. With this as your ride, you get to stick it to WGI twice.”

“And how do I do that?”

“This most wonderful vehicle, it was one of theirs. I’m one of their PMC contractors, or didn’t your prelim investigations dig that deep?”

Peel had to hand it to Zouga. The man made him laugh and forget, if just for a moment, that he had a mountain of problems to resolve. Most of them revolving around a dangerous Shoggoth who was hunting Peel as much as he was hunting it.

“So?” Zouga asked, “Now that I’ve answered your questions, and knowing that you will have already conducted your research, what can you tell me about Mr. Volkov?”

_____

Joan de Molina woke abruptly to darkness and the oppressive stench of stale sweat. Her captors had bound her hands behind her with rope. A blindfold covered her eyes. She listened calmly for a moment, using the small sounds within the place she was being held to learn what she could. Within seconds she knew she was indoors, but in a space with an extremely high ceiling. The lights, if there were any, were out. Same for any air-conditioning. A slow, shuffling sound indicated someone else was present, most likely another prisoner.

Feeling it was safe to move, de Molina flexed and then pulled her legs up toward her chest until she could slip her hands in front of her. She removed her blindfold, then worked her way out of the rather simple set of knots. The taste in her mouth told her she had been out for only a few hours. As she stood, she noted she was still wearing her same black fatigues, a good indicator that no one had undressed her, or molested her, while unconscious.

She could not determine where she was. The heat and humidity, and the staleness of the air, let her know they had not moved her far. Though the light was poor, there was enough of it for her to make out she was in an old warehouse. Rusted equipment, including pumps and drill heads, lay scattered everywhere. Some brandished older incarnations of the WGI logo.

Deciding to find the other person she had heard, de Molina scanned the area until finally she noticed a man sprawled on his side in the shadows. She could only see half of him, his left half. His arm was tied in the same rope that had bound her, securing him to a rusted car. He trembled at the sight of her.

“And who are you?”

The man gargled a response. As she approached, de Molina could see that the fellow was thin, covered in sweat and sores. A bowl of water sat next to him degradingly, forcing him to drink like a dog. De Molina thought about taking a drink for herself, but decided not to risk gastric infection, at least not yet. A moment’s concentration proved she could still generate her own saliva. That would be enough. Turning her attention to the man on the ground, she asked, “What’s your name?”

“Chiwetel. Chiwetel Nwosu.”

“Can you walk, Chiwetel?” When the man hesitated, she told him, “My name is Joan de Molina, and I’m going to get us both out of here.”

Chiwetel nodded again as she untied the rope around his arm. When she went to unfasten any bindings on his right hand, she could not find it. In fact, she could find none of the right half of his body. The sight did not horrify her. It was not the strangest thing she had ever seen. But it filled her mind with questions. With half his body missing, how could he breathe, or speak? How did his blood circulate? How—?

“What happened to you?”

“I’m Dr. Volkov’s experiment.”

“Where’s your other half?”

He turned so she could see. Shadows did not cover the man. The symmetrical right half of his body simply did not exist at all. When de Molina tried to perceive his interior, she found she could not see his insides, as if there was a gap in her vision.

“I don’t know,” answered Nwosu impossibly, with only half a mouth. “I can sometimes see through the eye of my other half. It’s in some kind of building, bound and tied to a chair, I believe. That eye is covered with a blindfold, so I’m uncertain. And…”

“And…?”

“Sometimes… Dr. Volkov… likes to torture me.”

Joan stared for a moment, unable to explain that which she was seeing. She had believed for some time that there was nothing remaining which might surprise her. Looking at Nwosu, however, trying to make sense of the impossibility before her, the Pirate Queen’s usual demeanor failed her. Her mouth slightly open, head tilted to one side, she puzzled over the oddity, forgetting that mere seconds earlier she had been bound and blindfolded. A captive of the monster that had created the horror before her.

Blinking hard, forcing herself to focus once more, she remembered a detail regarding her assignment. An element of the briefing Jamal Alhazred had gone to extreme lengths to explain to her.

“Chiwetel Nwosu, you’re a MEND soldier. I know, because I saw your name on Alhazred’s list of missing people.”

The half face nodded.

“We’re getting out of here. Now!”

Before they could move, however, they heard a helicopter passing over the warehouse.

“Not good,” Chiwetel exclaimed. “That’s Dr. Volkov. Come to collect this half of me.”

De Molina helped Chiwetel to his single foot. He was weak, suffering from days of neglect and torture.

“Not while I’m still breathing, he won’t.”

_____

Past the congestion of Port Harcourt, Zouga drove southeast towards the density and dampness of the mangrove rain forests. Peel stared at the passing landscape without really noticing it. He focused his mind on what he had uncovered on Pavel Volkov during the last three days. In Perth, Peel had logged on to the NSA’s Intelpedia. His clearance was just high enough to discover that Volkov was an employee of the corporation Westmorton Global Industries, which Peel had encountered in the US melding with other worldly dimensions to produce a zero-waste product. The failure of the process destroyed WGI’s Nevada facility and later played host to several clandestine military operations and quickly classified it as a Code-89 site.

Volkov was a scientist by profession, originally from Russia. He’d fled the country in the early 1990s because of his rumored unsavory experimentations on inmates at various unofficial Siberian concentration camps during the years of the Soviet Union. Coming to the US, WGI soon employed him and he became a long-term operative, first in their defense division and later in WGI Petroleum. Peel decided Volkov must have established strong ties with powers in the Pentagon, because the doctor had been a consultant on several highly secretive Code-89 projects including RESOLUTION ZERO, GRAY NEBULA and INFINITE EYE. That all of those projects were in Antarctica, the home of the Shoggoths, was not lost on Peel.

Through other research on the Internet, he found a photograph of his target, one taken within the previous few months in Baghdad. There had been a second person, unidentified, in the photo, a man Peel immediately recognized as a CIA handler with whom he had crossed paths several years earlier who went by the name Tom Gusman, and a third man, a US Ranger with a blacked-out face because of his special ops status.

Volkov was fat and bald, sporting round, thick-lens glasses that distorted his flesh to where he looked like he had no eyes at all. The strange specimen of a man possessed a wide smile, one that arranged his features as if he had just eaten something he should not have. Peel’s mind wondered at the idea if that something might be a human being.

Peel’s self-assigned mission was not so much to find Volkov, however, but a man associated with him, General Byrd Coaldale, a Pentagon official with a Code-89 clearance as high as it was possible to secure. A man also connected to RESOLUTION ZERO, GRAY NEBULA and INFINITE EYE. Peel’s problem was that Coaldale wasn’t a man, but another Shoggoth like the woman who had attacked him in Australia.

Shoggoths were as old as life on Earth, the failed by-products of another alien race that had ruled the Earth hundreds of millions of years ago. That race, the Pentapods, or Visitors, as some covert circles such as amongst operatives of RESOLUTION ZERO knew them as, was long gone, but not the Shoggoths. Immortal, they had remained. Some of their smaller specimens had perfected the technique of impersonating humans. Coaldale, disguised as a man, had almost killed Peel twice, in Florida and Chile respectively.

Peel knew from firsthand experience that Shoggoth impersonators had infiltrated all levels of human society. They worked an agenda which, as far as he could determine, was to enslave humanity, recreating them as mutated servants and food stocks.

The Baghdad photograph of Volkov had stuck in his mind, but only now when he thought of Coaldale did he understand why it bothered him so. Coaldale and Volkov both smiled in the same way. The same empty, disagreeable way.

Bloody hell, thought Peel, a memory of the fat man’s photo flashing within his mind. How could anyone look at that guy and not know he was a Shoggoth?

Zouga scratched his chin in a mock pose of thoughtfulness. “So, why did the bad-ass Major come back to Africa? He buys a sniper rifle with exploding bullets. He also buys an armored car. Me thinks you’re planning on assassinating this Mr. Volkov.”

Peel stared through his window, watched the rain forest speed past in a green blur. “It’s not Volkov I’m after, but a man I think he works for.”

“So you kill Volkov, then his boss gets mad and comes out of the shadows seeking revenge, when you kill him?”

Peel did not answer. He guessed there was no need.

Confirming his suspicions, Zouga added, “I know you want to kill this boss man. I can see it… the hatred in your eyes.”

“It might be personal.”

“Of course it is. But it makes me wonder, what did he do to deserve such attention? Not that I wouldn’t think he deserves it, simply because you think it.”

“That’s very friendly of you.”

“It is what friends are for. But I will tell you a secret. I think he deserves it because in my mind he is a friend of Volkov, and Volkov is elephant shit.”

Peel swallowed, fought the numbness he did not wish to feel again. That had taken him so many times over the weeks since his last encounter with Coaldale. Before it could cripple him, Peel pushed his feelings aside. “Three weeks ago, he murdered my fiancée, Nicola.”

“Wahala,” the Nigerian nodded sagely, his expression suddenly solemn and serious. “Say no more, my friend. More than ever, Sergeant Moses Zouga is here to assist.”

“Thank you.”

The pair drove for a few minutes without speaking, which suited Peel. Eventually, however, Zouga’s love of the sound of his own voice, coupled with his curiosity and his sense of self-preservation, forced him to prod further. “Your answer, however, does not explain the need for incendiary rounds, or the incendiary grenades. If you were taking on a battle tank, then I’d understand. But one, maybe two men, this seems… what would be the word… excessive, perhaps?”

Peel did not know how to explain what they were up against. He knew that ‘forewarned is forearmed’, but he had also learned that people simply could not handle such information. He had tried, repeatedly. And failed every time. At that point, no matter how unfair it might seem, he preferred those with him witnessed the insanity of Shoggoths for themselves, less they think Peel completely mad.

“It’s the only way.”

“Is this something like we encountered in Somalia?”

“Yes! But worse.”

In Peel’s mind, the answer was straightforward. Incendiary weapons were the only personal small arms Peel knew of that were effective against small-sized Shoggoths. Against larger specimens the size of oil tankers, nothing known except nuclear weapons could kill or even slow them, and it was not possible for him to get his hands on weapons of mass destruction. He knew this from experience as well.

Zouga checked Google Maps on his iPhone once more. “We’ve arrived,” he announced, then drove on a few hundred meters until they found a clearing in the foliage to park. Once out of the vehicle, Zouga threw Peel a set of unmarked military fatigues. “Get changed while I camouflage the car.”

Peel did so quickly while their vehicle disappeared under a lattice of branches and large leaves. He felt a strange comfort in wearing military fatigues and Kevlar once more, a relaxing rhythm of being on a mission. It had the feel of his old Army days, before the world of cosmic horrors had opened up to him, destroying any thought that there was long-term hope for himself and the future existence of humanity. As a man of action, though, he had found that field operations against ESBs did occasionally achieve some token of victory. And to slow the tide, even just a little, against an enemy that — to any reasonable person — ultimately could not be defeated, gave him the strength to go on.

“We’re not dead yet, you—”

Peel stopped his rage, holding it back. That he knew would only lead to depression, an emotion he could not afford right then. Thoughts of Nicola, lost to him, were something he did not need. Instead, Peel checked his weapons. The Beretta 92 and the fourteen kilo Barrett M82 sniper rifle both passed inspection. Without thinking, he chambered a full clip of Mk 211 .50 caliber incendiary rounds into the M82, an unconscious smile crossing his face.

Sergeant Zouga had similarly armed himself, with a M16 assault rifle fitted with a grenade launcher and his own Beretta 92.

“Where exactly are we?”

Zouga pointed into the jungle. “About a klick in that direction is an old WGI oil storage depot. I’ve got good intelligence Volkov will be there today,” The sergeant glanced at his wristwatch, still a more reliable timepiece in the field than any recent invention, and added, “Right now in fact.”

“Good.”

They set off, marching fast but with the practiced stealth only soldiers could master. When a clearing loomed, Peel and Zouga crouched. Ahead, approximately one hundred meters distant, were several warehouses and buildings, four oil storage tanks each a dozen meters in diameter and five meters high. In the depot’s midst were several trucks, watched over by paramilitary soldiers. The invaders studied both the defenders and their defenses.

Faces remained hidden behind balaclavas and scarves. At such a distance theirs eyes revealed little, but their body language spoke volumes. Someone had trained these men well enough, but they were indifferent. Only a few of them appeared alert and prepared. Those were the ones of which both Peel and Zouga made mental notes. The ones he would kill first.

Every soldier they could see had either an MI6 or an AK-47. Most of them had them slung, were not holding them. Were not expecting trouble. Peel suspected them to be a typical MEND outfit, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. Amongst the group of armed men were a collection of demure Nigerian civilians, men, women and children.

Most prominent of all was the hairless, fat man in their midst, the sloppy, unmistakable figure of Pavel Volkov. Wearing his orange WGI logo emblazoned overalls over his enormous frame, Volkov moved from one man, woman or child to the next. He examined each briefly, nodded, or shook his head at each one. He only selected young and fit men, who he sent to stand in a separate congregation.

Accompanying Volkov was a tall Nigerian dressed in a paramilitary uniform, accented by two .357 Magnum revolvers in hip holsters and an MI6 over his back. He wore a captain’s cap and smoked a large cigar. Volkov and the ‘captain’ occasionally conversed, but they were too far from Peel and Zouga to hear what they said.

Satisfied that he had a good assessment of the depot and his foes, Peel crouched and readied his sniper rifle. Zouga crouched next to him as he quickly determined wind velocity, which was slight. Peel then adjusted his telescopic sights to compensate. The crosshairs of the Barrett M82 perfectly dissected Volkov. One squeeze and it would all be over for the Russian, or so Peel hoped.

Then Peel noticed the oil tanks behind the fat WGI man. There were three figures standing on the roof of the closest tank. Two were MEND soldiers with M16s, manhandling a third man with only one leg and one arm who was their prisoner. Even though the group was too distant to make out their faces, Peel felt as if they were staring right at him. Rationally, however, without binoculars or a scope, he knew it would be impossible for them to see either himself of Zouga, concealed as they were.

“You’re going to take Volkov down?” Zouga spoke softly.

“The tanks,” Peel explained with an equally measured whisper. “Hit one of those and the entire facility goes up in flames. Plus…” He pointed to the men on the tank.

“So?”

“So, I kill everyone. Men, woman and children. Everyone.”

Zouga said nothing in response. Peel could almost hear the man’s synapses working hard to find a solution.

“Who is that man with Volkov?”

Zouga stared through compact binoculars. “That’s Godswill Osoba.”

“And who is he?”

“A MEND rebel leader. Caused my team a lot of grief of late. Attacked a WGI offshore platform. Rigs are supposedly too far out to sea for MEND to reach them.”

“Or so you thought.”

“Exactly.”

“So why is he offering his people to Volkov? I thought they were enemies.”

“That,” answered Zouga with a pause showing he was way ahead of his partner, “is an extremely good question.”

Before either man could say another word, they heard the unmistakable and deafening noises of a helicopter on an approach path. Scanning the skies, Peel spotted a Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King with US Navy insignia, first zipping over one warehouse, then descending to land. The sergeant spoke words, but they couldn’t hear them over the noise.

Peel returned his sights to the congregation, Volkov in particular. The fat man seemed to expect the helicopter. The wind of the rotating blades barely moved him as it did the others. Peel could have shot at Volkov easily enough in the commotion, but with the buffeting winds, a miss would be likely and instead he would hit the oil tanks. He cursed, wishing they had approached the depot from a different direction, knowing it was too late for wishes at that point.

When the Sea King landed, five Navy SEALs jumped from the helicopter. Each carried Close Quarter Battle Receiver M4A1 Carbines, and wore ballistic vests and combat helmets. They took positions to cover each other from potential points of attack. All the while they watched their commanding officer as he stepped down from the transport.

“Bloody hell,” Peel exclaimed when he lined up the SEAL Lieutenant in his telescopic sights.

“What?”

“The Lieutenant on point. I know him.”

“You do?”

“Dirk Kinsella. At least that’s the name he gave four months ago when we crossed paths in Pakistan. He was working as a contract assassin for the Pentagon.”

“So what’s a bad-ass like that doing in Nigeria, in uniform?”

“I think I know, but I hope I’m wrong.”

Peel confirmed his worst fears when he moved his crosshairs from Kinsella to Pavel Volkov and then to the US General, now marching from the Sea King. The General was Byrd Coaldale, the fit, muscular Shoggoth-man who was Peel’s enemy. In his human disguise he featured closely cropped red hair, a muscular physique and an unmistakable air of arrogance that only a CEO or a Shoggoth could project. Seeing him again, rage consumed Peel. He almost squeezed the trigger when the crosshairs found Coaldale’s center of mass. The only thing that stayed his hand was the knowledge that the violent air turbulence caused by the still rotating blades would cause a missed target.

Coaldale and Volkov met and shook hands. The pair looked smug, as if secretly congratulating each other and themselves.

Without conscious thought Peel gave into his rage and squeezed the trigger, his anger overcoming his cool. Bullets flew from his weapon, jarred his shoulder with a punch each time a projectile ejected from the barrel, one after the other after the other.

In the instant before he fired, and too late for Peel to change his mind, both Coaldale and Volkov turned and stared towards him, then moved apart like a tide drawing back into the ocean. They had known exactly where Peel was, and when he was going to fire.

The bullets missed both, hitting the closest oil tank behind them. The one with the men on the roof. Immediately the massive tank erupted in a blinding explosion of reds, oranges, whites and yellows as the black liquid within ignited and inflamed, vaporizing the trio atop.

On the ground, the roaring heat spread in every direction. The already hot air became like an oven, and violently dry. Crisping. Amid the roaring noise, shrapnel flung through the air as deadly jagged barbs, which killed several of the MEND soldiers and one SEAL operator before anyone could react. Anyone except for Volkov and Coaldale. They knew exactly where to stand to avoid any collision with flying debris.

Those remaining alive scattered as the rising fireball grew larger and hotter by the second. MEND members and Nigerian civilians fled in panic into the rain forests as fast as their legs or trucks could carry them.

“Peel,” cried Zouga. “You don kolo?”

Peel chose not to respond. The damage already done, he squeezed the trigger again only to hear it click, realized his magazine was now empty. Coaldale and Volkov seemed to take this as their call to sprint to the Sea King. Kinsella and his remaining three SEALs turned towards the direction of the attacking gunfire. Because they could not see their enemies directly, hidden as they were in the concealing foliage, the soldiers released multiple volleys of semi-automatic fire into the green. Peel ducked low, trying to make himself as small a target as possible.

When the first volley of gunfire ceased, Peel heard his partner scream in pain, giving away their position. Glancing behind, he saw that Zouga had tried to run only to take a bullet in the leg, which had brought him down. The sergeant rolled in the dirt, wailing against the agony of his wound. More bullets from the SEALs caused Peel to duck his head again, hoping for small mercies that he would not also become one of the wounded. When the volley ceased, they had miraculously missed him. Zouga had chosen their cover well.

Knowing there was nothing he could do to help his partner at the moment, Peel loaded a second magazine into the sniper rifle and fired off the entire clip. None of the rounds found a target, but the exploding bullets were enough to turn confident Special Forces soldiers into terrified targets, ducking for cover.

With a moment’s reprieve, Peel dropped the weapon and pulled his Barretta 92 sidearm, fired round after round forcing the SEALs to retreat further to find more substantial cover.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Zouga yelled behind him.

Peel glanced again at the carnage. The former oil storage facility was a blazing inferno. The SEALs were retreating, boarding the Sea King, joining Volkov and Coaldale. Peel fired in the general direction of the military helicopter as it took to the skies. He fired a few more rounds when the helicopter was high above them, in case they had any ideas of returning.

On the ground Captain Osoba, his MEND soldiers and the civilians had mostly dispersed. Peel saw corpses but no wounded, and thankfully no children counted amongst the dead.

Then, to Peel’s considerable surprise, a tall, pale-skinned woman appeared from one of the intact warehouses. She was slim with dark hair tied in a practical ponytail and dressed in black fatigues. She supported a maimed man with a single arm and a single leg with similar wounds to the man he had seen on the now disintegrated roof. Then she lifted a Battle Receiver M4A1 from the dead Ranger’s hands and slung it over her shoulder. Both the man and the woman appeared ragged as they hobbled toward the sanctity of the rain forest. The pair only just covered the required distance before the warehouse also disintegrated within another consuming fireball.

Satisfied that no immediate threats lingered, Peel turned and ran to his friend. Zouga clutched his leg, rolling on the damp earth as he screamed, “Peel. You kolo akata bastard! I’m fucking shot.”

The Nigerian’s blood trickled through his fingers which gripped his leg wound. Peel crouched to examine the injury. It looked clean, and it appeared the bullet had passed through the flesh without shattering bone. Peel considered the sergeant lucky to have taken only a single bullet. Despite Zouga’s thrashing, agonized cries and swearing, Peel bandaged the wound and slowed the flow of blood. He lifted his friend’s MI6 in one hand and his friend in the other, and the two hobbled into the undergrowth, toward their four-wheel drive. He hoped no one else had found it in the meantime.

“Fuck your mother,” Zouga cried loud. “Fuck! Fuck your mother.”

“Get it under control,” Peel snapped. “Can you do that?” He was certain Zouga’s pain was excruciating, but if the Nigerian continued with his expletives voiced with such volume, it would not take long for a few curious MEND to turn back, shoot them dead and loot their weaponry.

Realizing the same, Zouga nodded and clenched his teeth. The pair quick-marched two hundred meters with the sergeant wincing every step of the way.

In an unexpected clearing, a paramilitary soldier surprised Peel as he emerged from the undergrowth. Their foe looked to be MEND, but was… ‘incomplete.’ The man seemed symmetrically broken, as if each side of the face belonged to a different individual. The figure’s legs and arms were of different lengths, muscular density, skin color and thickness. Each hemisphere of its body seemed to operate independently from the other.

The half-plus-half soldier carried a shotgun in one hand, a machine pistol in the other. One side of the face snarled, the other cackled manically. Eyes rotated and blinked independently of the other. Leather belts along the length of the torso, and around the neck and forehead, held the two body halves together. In the single second it took Peel and his half-plus-half foe to size each other up, he also saw the man’s shotgun turning toward himself and Zouga, realizing he had no time to shoot first.

Then, just as unexpected as the oddity preparing to execute him, the slim woman in black fatigues he had seen earlier suddenly appeared. She was carrying her own half-bodied companion, the one Peel had seen earlier at the warehouse and mistaken for a maimed cripple. Her sudden appearance momentarily distracted the two independent eyes of the half-plus-half foe.

Without hesitation Peel dropped Zouga, raised the MI6 and fired. At such a close-range Peel could not miss. Every bullet tore through the horror before Peel like nails hammered into a slab of meat. The shattered body flopped over backward, dead before it hit the ground. Without pause, Peel turned his weapon upon the woman and her hobbling victim and kept both in his sights. Behind Peel, Zouga screamed again, floundering in the muck where Peel had dropped him.

Drawing Peel’s attention with a move of her hand, the woman said, “I can get us out of here.”

Peel stared, not missing the fact the woman remained composed despite the circumstances of their meeting, or the fact he was holding a high-powered weapon on her. Somewhere along the line she had lost her carbine. That fact did not seem to bother her, either, nor that the man she was assisting was missing one half of his body, dissected perfectly from crown to groin.

Peel marveled at the sight. The man’s insides he could not see. The space around the cavity distorted and twisted. By rights the fellow should have been dead, but one eye and half a mouth were more than enough to get across the fact he was alive, both through the self-awareness and the terror they expressed. Peel remembered the maimed man on top of the tank. They could have been brothers.

“I’m guessing you’re the man called Peel,” said the woman.

“How do you know that? Who the hell are you?”

“Don’t waste our time,” the woman snapped. “You are Peel, yes?” When Peel simply stared at her, she added, “Volkov wants you dead, so he’ll be back. And he’ll bring ‘friends’.”

“Friends?”

“Yes, and then we’ll all be dead.”

Then, before they could say more, bullets erupted inexplicably from the skull of the half-plus-half corpse. Peel and the woman ducked at the sound of gunfire, but they were already too slow to find cover. Peel felt the air rush past him. A near miss, or misses. Checking his body, he found no wounds, felt no pain. He was unharmed, but only because of luck.

“What the hell was that,” exclaimed Zouga.

As Peel studied the pulped mess of half a cranium, he answered, “Bullets came flying out of his skull.”

“How is that possible?” grimaced the Nigerian mercenary still rolling in the soft wet earth clenching his teeth against the pain.

“Zouga, mate, when you tell me, we’ll both know.” Peel stepped far from the corpse in case the skull contained more surprises.

As she adjusted the single arm of the half-man draped over her shoulder, the mystery woman said, “I know this is all very interesting, but we need to get out of here.”

“We?” Peel shook his head. “I have no idea who you are, or why you are here.”

“You think I’m WGI?” The woman’s tone carried amusement. Peel detected a hint of a French accent as she added, “You think I work for Volkov?”

Peel shrugged, his way of admitting that the woman’s suggestions were exactly what he was thinking.

“You are as naïve as you are human.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means Volkov had myself and Mr. Nsowu here bound and gagged at that warehouse you shot up.”

“So you tell me.”

“Yes,” she said, her tone implying she would appreciate his wising up sometime soon.

“And you figured we could just help each other?”

A part of Peel’s mind realized as he spoke that he was holding his breath, every sense within him straining to take in her answer completely. There was a powerful part of his mind that believed she was most likely a WGI operative, a double-agent purposely left behind by Volkov, or possibly Coaldale, to spy on him. There was also an equally vocal chorus within his mind that feared she might be something… else.

“One point for you.” Smiling, the sound of finger-muffled laughter in her voice, she added, “Honestly, do you have a better idea?”

Before Peel could answer, the sound of gunfire captured his attention. For an instant he had expected bullets to fly from the flesh of the dead half-plus-half man. His internal radar — hearing and touch working together — told him otherwise. As his mind perceived that these new shots had originated from the jungle, it threw him sideways.

“Shotguns,” he said, falling behind a rotting tree trunk as scattershot tore through the foliage where he had just been. Peel heard boots pounding into the earth.

“Trio.”

Peel sucked down a deep breath, quickly exhaled, repeated — then took another and held it as three more of the unsymmetrical soldiers blundered through the smoking foliage. Watching them quietly, he noted their assault rifles and machetes, and their separate halves bound insanely with rope and belts. At the sight of Peel’s unlikely group, the things had fired wildly in their general direction. Peel bided his time, sliding his weapon slowly, balancing the amount of oxygen he had remaining against the trio’s point of view.

With thirty seconds remaining before forced to risk himself, the moment came when all three of the soldiers were not looking in Peel’s general direction. Without hesitation Peel triggered his M16 and released three short bursts, punching holes into the belted men. Then, unexpectedly, a fourth half-plus-half man sprinted from the undergrowth brandishing the SEAL carbine the woman had lost earlier.

Peel shifted his weapon first, only to discover the clip to be empty. The belted man, his weapon a split-second from having Peel in range, fixed its skewed vision. One eye shut, its finger fell against the trigger of its weapon. But instead of shooting Peel, it fell as a corpse. A bullet rammed into one half of its skull, but did not shatter out of the other. Two more rounds followed, tearing through the half-plus-half foe’s chest to silence it.

Peel turned to the foreign woman. Sweat poured down her face, and she gripped a smoking .38 revolver. She too had dropped her half-man companion as unceremoniously as Peel had dropped Zouga, and now she turned her weapon fast and lined Peel up in her sights. Then suddenly she smirked, holstering the .38 as she said, “There, do you trust me yet?”

Peel dropped his M16, knowing the magazine was empty, and grabbed up the Quarter Battle Receiver Carbine. A quick inspection revealed its magazine to be mostly full. Armed once more, he decided he could spare a couple of minutes to hear what his mysterious companion had to say. His voice terser than he would have liked, he asked, “How do you know me?”

The woman laughed. “Volkov boasted I was a pawn in his trap for you. You are this most formidable Harrison Peel, right?”

He nodded, finding no point to concealing his identity any longer, but he felt confused. “Volkov can’t possibly know I’m here.”

“Oh, cheri, but he does.”

The pair found their conversation drowned out as engine noise suddenly roaring overhead. The Sea King was on the move again, appearing once more in the overcast skies on a trajectory aimed at their current position.

“Fine,” growled Peel, “we can help each other, for now.”

Peel wasted no time in lifting Zouga, whose eyes had lost their focus now that blood saturated his leg. Moving as quickly as they could, the pair disappeared again under the green canopy. Peel had no solid reason for believing the woman, but he had to decide. And, with the Sea King roaring into view, he decided she could shoot him if she wanted to because if she did not do it, then it would be Coaldale, Volkov, or their ‘friends’ that would if they remained where they were. As he ducked under a tangle of branches, he swore he heard her speak.

“Oh, we are trusted. And the world fills with love once more.” The woman was laughing at him. Amused by their situation.

Peel did not know what to make of the woman. Who was she, he wondered as she followed him into the jungle, supporting her halved man companion? What is she doing here? What’s her part in all this? Why hadn’t he heard of her before, read about her—?

Peel did not know what to think. Realizing that he needed his focus elsewhere, however, he put aside thoughts of the mystery woman and concentrated on getting himself and his friend out of harm’s way.

Just as the quartet had covered several hundred meters, getting themselves completely beneath the jungle’s sheltering canopy, the Sea King reached the clearing. Kinsella and his SEALs dropped grenades into the surrounding jungle, but none detonated close to Peel and his companions. Knowing they were not likely to hit their targets in such a haphazard manner, eventually the helicopter departed. By the time they did, the quartet had covered more than a kilometer, half marching, half stumbling through the thick foliage.

“So, what’s your name, seeing you know mine and all,” Peel demanded after the helicopter disappeared. Despite the French lilt to her tone, he was certain it was masking an American accent, most likely from one of the eastern seaboard states.

“De Molina. Joan to my friends.”

“You think we’re friends.”

“I think I gave you an option. What you do with it is up to you.”

Peel took a moment to access their situation. Zouga was barely hanging on, close to unconsciousness, as if the efforts to contain the pain consumed all his thought processes. Peel knew the sergeant’s significant blood loss was not helping the situation any, either.

“So,” De Molina asked, “are you special forces?”

“Haa—” Peel laughed. “Nothing that grand, but ex-military, yes. Since we’re sharing, who’s your friend?”

“This is Chiwetel Nwosu. A victim of Volkov’s research program.”

Peel nodded, accepting what he saw. He had seen worse in his time. “Volkov’s splitting his victims in two.”

De Molina nodded back. The fact she was accepting the weirdness of the situation as easily as he did was not lost on Peel.

“Why would he do that?”

Peel thought upon her question. “They’re spies. One half remains locked away somewhere, reporting back to Volkov everything the other half sees.”

De Molina looked to Nwosu. He was convulsing now. “Unreliable spies if they are.”

“Regardless, we have to get both our friends far from here, if we are to help Nwosu, and others like him.”

“Help them? You think you know what has happened to Nwosu?” Her hand stabbed the air, pointing at her companion. “You’ve seen this kind of thing before?”

“Not the same, but I’ve seen equally horrific things.”

“And you helped those people?”

Peel did not want to answer her, because he had helped no one. Despite his success against the various horrors that he had encountered, he often felt that his friends always died around him. Looking down, he offered, “This is different.”

Then they heard the Sky King return. Possibly hovering above their very position. When grenades began detonating nearby, only a couple of hundred meters from their position, Peel barked, “Blindfold him!”

De Molina got his meaning. Tearing a sleeve from her shirt, she wrapped it about Nwosu’s eye. He barely registered what she was doing.

“It’s just for the short term,” she whispered to the maimed Nigerian. “I promise.”

Zouga flinched at the noise and vibrations, then passed into unconsciousness as Peel expected he eventually would. Grateful his friend would not feel the pain, Peel lifted then draped Zouga over his shoulders and moved off into the brush at a trot so De Molina and Nwosu had to run-hop to keep up with him. Once again, they put enough distance between themselves and the helicopter to stop and rest.

“You think Nwosu’s other half told Volkov where we are?”

Peel gritted his teeth. “Believe me, if you were being tortured by a Shoggoth, you’d talk very quickly too.”

“A Shoggoth? What is a Shoggoth?”

Peel shuddered and then hefted Zouga once more, tossing him over his shoulder. “I’ll tell you later.”

In less than a quarter hour the group reached the armored four-wheel drive, luckily still camouflaged and untouched. Unlocking the vehicle, Peel lowered Zouga on the back seat. The sergeant’s bandages now saturated red. As Peel removed them, the wound beneath looked worse than he remembered, the hole larger, the flesh more torn up. Peel pulled a first aid kit from the back of the vehicle, cleaned the wound, splashed it liberally with iodine, then bandaged it again.

Meanwhile, De Molina had helped Nwosu into the seat next to Zouga. He had passed out as well. The woman kept feeling his forehead, checking that the blindfold remained in place. “He’s running a fever,” she explained while Peel attended to his own patient.

“Give him water. Get a rag, soak it, then drip it slowly into his mouth.”

De Molina nodded and did what Peel suggested.

With Zouga attended to, Peel watched until de Molina’s back was to him. Waiting for the moment he felt her attention was completely on the half-man, he moved forward and snatched her .38 revolver from her belt. As he pointed it at the back of her head, de Molina did not bother to turn as she asked, “Do you feel better now, Mr. Peel? In control? Safe from the oh, so dangerous woman?” When Peel did not answer, she turned, frowning as she told him, “It took you long enough to take it.”

“You’re acting as if you let me do so.”

De Molina’s expression told him that was exactly what she had done. Not bothering to comment on his statement directly, she said merely, “You don’t trust easily, do you, Mr. Peel?”

“No, you’re right. I don’t. But I will trust you enough to do the driving.”

Holstering her weapon, he slung his carbine under his arm, figuring she would try nothing smart with him again, now that he possessed all the weapons. As de Molina moved around the vehicle to the driver’s side, a part of his brain whispered that so far, she had tried nothing at all.

Once they were all inside their armored transport, de Molina sent them in a northerly direction at top speed. Peel watched her skillfully shift through the heavy gear set.

“Do you have any kind of plan?”

“I need to get my friend to a hospital.”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“There are risks, but I can’t see any other option.”

“Yes, there are, because your friend is Sergeant Moses Zouga, formerly of the Nigerian Armed Forces, now a private military contractor under the employ of WGI Petroleum.”

“You are well informed. I’ll give you that.”

“Why not give me this one, too?” Another smirk lined de Molina’s well-sculpted face. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, and I doubt that, your mission — whatever it was — is compromised. This suggests the US SEALs and WGI knew you were going to attack today long before you arrived. If you take Zouga to a hospital, they’ll be looking for you there. That will be the end of him, and most likely you as well.”

Peel had been thinking similar thoughts, but with no alternative plan he had no option. After his latest examination of Zouga’s wound, he knew his friend could not survive another forty-eight hours if left untreated. Zouga and he went way back. They shared an odd friendship, and this was important to Peel, plus he had grown weary of people dying around him.

“And what would you suggest?”

“Let me take you to my employer. His name is Jamal Alhazred, and I’m certain he can help both our unconscious friends.”

Peel looked at Nwosu, relieved that the blindfold remained in place. “Sounds like you want me to take a lot on trust?”

“Yes, I do,” she answered, eyes on the path before them, a trace of laughter in her voice, “oh ye with all the guns.”

Despite all the risks Peel could foresee in his current situation, his instincts told him to trust this woman. But he could not help but feel troubled by the fact he had found her hiding out in a WGI Petroleum facility near a questionable deal going down between two lethal Shoggoth-humans. No matter what his gut was telling him, he needed answers that made some kind of sense.

“All right, you want me to trust you, so I need to know who you are, exactly, and what you were doing at that depot.”

“Very well, you didn’t recognize my name, perhaps you’ve heard my nickname. In some circles I’m known as the Pirate Queen.”

“No, sorry.”

“I’m a professional cat bugler. For God’s sake, don’t just sit there. Look me up. I’m certain you’ve got an app on your phone that links to whatever agency you work for. An assets and targets database, perhaps? You are a spy, aren’t you?”

Despite himself, Peel found that he liked this strange woman that had been so unexpectedly thrust into his path. And, since he did have such an app as she had suggested, he pulled his iPhone and logged into NSA’s intelpedia. Within minutes he had Joan de Molina’s file.

US citizen, residences in six countries, parents lost under tragic circumstances, known to be a habitual criminal from an early age, but clever enough to never allow anything to be proven. Her list of known associates ranged from various master criminals including the Haitian mercenary outfit called the Murder Dogs. Then Peel found an ominously glaring red flag. De Molina had links to New York City private detective Theodore London.

London was a potential Code-89 asset, meaning he had encountered the same alien menaces — such as Shoggoths — Peel had. But his file also noted suspicions London might be a menace of some sort himself. Peel had heard many stories concerning London. It was all whispers and suppositions, and every analysis of the man pointed toward him being on the side of humanity. But, like so many things in his business, everything on him was whispers and suppositions. Just like the woman behind the wheel sitting next to him.

Suddenly Peel was looking at de Molina in an entirely new light. The woman had a Code-89 flag herself, and a PFA — Possible Freelance Asset — notation. No agency had yet recruited or used her. The photo on her file matched the woman he looked at.

At the moment his phone asserted that de Molina was definitely who she said she was, she asked, “Happy now?”

Before he could question the coincidence of her asking her question at the moment she did, the sight of several Nigerian military trucks speeding towards them distracted both of them. Peel lowered his gaze, trying to hide his whiteness. If they were caught now, it would be all over for him. The trucks raced past, however, much to Peel’s relief. He assumed they headed for the burning oil storage facility in the other direction.

“So, Peel, the WGI has already sent their Nigerian goons to do their dirty work. You’re alone, Peel. You need my help.”

The woman had summed him up accurately. He was alone. Nicola was dead, the only woman he had ever loved. She was dead because Coaldale had murdered her, butchered her before his very eyes. De Molina however was wrong only about him being on assignment. He had no mission, not one sanctioned by any agency. Peel was hunting Coaldale on his own because the NSA refused to help him hunt down and finish Nicola’s killer once and for all. His NSA superiors were Code-89 cleared. They knew Coaldale was a Shoggoth, and had reasons enough of their own to want him dead. In fact, he realized, they must have known about Volkov as well. And yet they did nothing.

Then he remembered a detail about de Molina’s behavior, apparent every time they had spoken of that strange, fat man.

“Tell me about Volkov again.”

“What about him?”

There it was again. She had been around him. Captured by him. Held by him. And yet—

“Tell me why you aren’t afraid of him.”

“I gave up being afraid of much of anything some time ago.” Swerving to avoid an axle-destroying rut in the road, de Molina turned to Peel just long enough to flash him a look designed to let him know she understood what he wanted. As they continued onward, she told him as quickly as possible about her time on the oil rig. How she had found Nwosu, halved, and all the rest that had happened up to their escape when Peel started shooting up the oil tanks. “I will also tell you what you must already believe, that Volkov is not a human being.”

“You know what? I believe you.”

“You think he is one of those things you mentioned earlier, a Shoggoth?”

Peel nodded. He wished he were wrong, that they were both horribly mistaken. As he did so, however, Nwosu groaned in pain, reminding Peel of all the half men and who had created them. Without speaking, he pulled de Molina’s .38 free and handed it back to her. Just as quietly, she accepted and replaced it in its holster without slowing down. Night was coming, and their dying needed care.

——

De Molina drove west toward the town of Akabuka, where she was certain they would find a hospital. Peel attempted to Google the facility, but found nothing on the Internet to prove or disprove her story. When they hit the town outskirts, they passed a slaughterhouse burning tires rather than wood to loosen the skins of animals for butchering and eating. The smell made Peel gag.

Like so many African towns, buildings looked incomplete and constructed of cheap concrete. Cars were old and rusted and ignored by people dressed in bright clothes who walked the streets in large numbers. The crowds stepped over and ignored litter of every manner. Mud more than anything else covered surfaces.

De Molina drove directly into a neighboring shantytown. Before Peel could protest, Nigerian men surrounded their vehicle and threatened with assault rifles and machetes. De Molina deliberately unlocked the doors for them. As the men dragged Peel and the others from the vehicle, Peel shouted, “I trusted you!”

The Pirate Queen did not hear his words, however. She was too busy trying to explain herself to them. The men took the quartet forcibly to a rundown shed. A tall, thick-set Nigerian, whom Peel noted de Molina addressed as Solomon Adegoke, seemed to be the boss man, commanding the armed soldiers where to take them and who needed to stick around for the presumable impending interrogation. They pushed Peel and de Molina into the center of the shed. The soldiers, whom Peel presumed were MEND, watched with rifles ready.

“You know the deal,” commanded the muscular Nigerian. “Strip.”

“Both of us?” de Molina asked.

Adegoke’s nod was stern. “Either of you could have bugs on you, or trackers.”

A young teenage woman entered carrying clothes, a man’s and a woman’s set. She passed them to Adegoke, and he accepted them with barely an acknowledgement before she disappeared again.

“These are for you. Now strip.”

When Peel and de Molina were nude, Adegoke commanded their clothes must burn in the slaughterhouse. He walked around them both several times, inspecting them. De Molina confidentially ignored the man’s ogling stares at her fit, toned figure. When he seemed satisfied, he pushed their new set of clothes into each of their chests.

“Akata,” he spoke to Peel, “you and the lepa can make yourself decent now.”

Peel and de Molina dressed quickly as their guards laughed. The clothes were cheap and secondhand, but they fit. Peel had cotton pants, a buttoned shirt and sneakers slightly too small for him. They offered De Molina a tight t-shirt, a floral skirt and sandals. If not for the paleness of their skins, they would have blended seamlessly with the locals.

“What about my friend, Moses?” Peel demanded. “He needs urgent medical attention.”

Adegoke gave Peel another of his barest nods. “Right, time to introduce you to Alhazred.”

Three MEND soldiers grabbed Peel from behind, bound his hands with rope and thrust a hessian bag over his head that stunk of chickens. Marched outside, they forced him into a car, seated between two men. They drove fast, out along the roads that crisscrossed the Delta jungle, pot-holed in far too many places for anyone’s comfort.

After half a day of driving, the vehicle finally stopped. The men had talked often, in what Peel guessed was probably Igbo, Ijaw or Ogoni, all local dialects he had no chance of understanding. With their journey’s end, doors opened, and the men exited the vehicle, dragging Peel with him. Taken inside another building — an assumption on Peel’s behalf only because the light seeping through the bag lessened significantly — his captors marched him through several rooms, untied him before slapping a handcuff on one hand and slapping the other end around what sounded to be a metal pipe. The men pushed Peel to the ground, before disappearing, slamming then locking a heavy-set door behind them.

Peel pulled the hessian bag from his head to find he was in a dark concrete room with metal grills on the windows as its only adornment. All he could see outside were the leaves of banana trees and the featureless walls of decrepit houses forming a closed courtyard.

“If Zouga dies, I’m coming after all of you,” he screamed to the locked door.

Peel heard laughter, then nothing. Checking his handcuffs, it was secured to a water pipe as expected. He pulled at it, straining to his utmost, but could not make it budge. There was a mug of water waiting for him, which he drained quickly. It was always hot and muggy in the Delta, day or night. The MEND at least attended to that need. In frustration, he pulled at the pipe again, but it didn’t move.

“De Molina!”

He screamed to the bursting point of his lungs, equally out of frustration, but he heard nothing.

He was alone.

——

Peel woke suddenly as the door unlocked and opened. Early morning light streamed through the window, suggesting that exhaustion had sent him into a restless sleep through the entire night. Two figures entered. As his eyes rapidly adjusted to the light, he realized one was de Molina.

“And look who’s here.”

She was now dressed in far better fitting clothes, functional garb that hugged her taunt figure, revealing her shape far more so than her Nigerian garb from the previous day. The tall slim Arab next to her wore a caftan with a sash and a fez. To Peel’s surprise, the man smiled warmly, as if they were old friends who had not seen each other for a long time. Behind de Molina and the Arab, a MEND soldier watched closely, with his M16 rifle at the ready should he need it.

“Mr. Peel, I’m sorry we’ve treated you like this,” said the Arab. “I’ve been discussing with my MEND friends what we should do with you. They unfortunately think we should shoot you.”

Peel scrambled to his feet, rubbed his eyes with his free hand to force himself further awake. “And what do you want to do with me, Mr. Alhazred?”

“Good guess.” The Moroccan smiled again. “Yes, I am Jamal Alhazred. Joan here has told me all about you. I agree with her, I think you deserve to live.”

Peel snorted. “That’s nice to hear.”

“No one is going to kill you. In fact, we are going to help you. Your enemy is our enemy, so our goals are the same.”

“Volkov?” Peel asked.

“Yes, Dr. Volkov.”

Peel considered his situation, remembered what was most important to him at that moment. When he asked after his friend, Alhazred patted him on the shoulders, like a father. “Relax, my oh, so serious friend. We have taken Mr. Zouga to a hospital in Akabuka, under an assumed name, of course, so neither the Nigerian Army or WGI will find him. He is being treated as we speak.”

“And how am I supposed to believe that?” Peel blurted, but he was past excusing his emotions.

“You have my word,” responded Alhazred.

“And what’s that worth?”

“Enough, Peel,” interrupted de Molina. “Realize everyone here had reason to suspect you.”

“You want suspicion,” snapped Peel. Stepping forward, rattling his cuff, he said, “What about Nwosu? I hope you haven’t removed his blindfold. If he recognizes this place, Volkov and his soldiers will be upon us in no time.”

“Nwosu was unconscious when we arrived,” said de Molina. “We only removed his blindfold once we had safely locked him inside a room without windows.”

“Are you certain?”

Jamal took a step forward. “Mr. Peel, I know Chiwetel Nwosu and his family very well. As a committed member of MEND, he would not consciously betray us.”

“No… not consciously.”

Then, before any could argue further, the building reverberated violently as they all heard the unmistakable sounds of a jet fighter passing close overhead. Peel ducked, covered his head with his free arm, expecting falling bombs or guided missiles. Jamal and de Molina did the same. When the explosion erupted in the building next door, a flash of light dazzled the trio before the shock waves knocked them all to the ground. The noise was near-deafening. Smoke quickly filled the air.

A second bomb detonated, closer than the last, bringing half the roof down. A shower of shattered bricks and cement pelted them all, followed by falling sheets of ripped iron. When the debris settled, Peel looked up, thankful and relieved to be unharmed. De Molina and Alhazred were on the ground, however, covered in dust, small rocks and sand.

One half of Alhazred’s face bled from a serious gash. De Molina attended to him, helping him to his feet. Peel scanned the room for the MEND soldier only to find his corpse, buried under enough rubble to crush him from the chest up.

Testing the pipe to which they had chained him, he found it loosened. Pulling with strength, he tore it free. Slipping his cuff free, Peel raced to the dead man and grabbed up the soldier’s M16. Slinging it over his back, he ran to Alhazred and de Molina and helped them both to their feet. He yelled at them both that it was time to get out. De Molina nodded in agreement, but Alhazred shook his head and pointed to his ears, showing that the explosions had affected his hearing.

At the same moment, Peel heard the military jet returning. Looking skyward through the space where the roof used to be, he spied a Chinese manufactured Chengdu F-7NI fighter on its second assault run.

“It’s Nigerian Air Force,” Peel yelled over the drowning noise of the jet engine. Alhazred and de Molina were on their feet now and, Peel hoped, ready for action. “You believe me now that Nwosu betrayed us?”

“Not consciously,” Alhazred yelled over the roar of the returning fighter. “How could he? He doesn’t know where this place is, never been here before.”

Peel clenched his teeth. “Regardless, we need to get out of here, fast, and we need to bring Nwosu with us, before he causes more harm.”

The Chengdu was above them, its machine guns sending bullets ripping through the crumbling infrastructure of the compromised MEND hideout. Peel recalled the thousands of intelligence reports he had read and done his best to memorize. The Chengdu featured two 30mm Type 30-1 cannons, with sixty rounds per gun. Each of those rounds was punching large holes in the concrete walls, and into anyone unlucky enough to be behind those walls.

Peel kept himself low, hoping as he had so many times in the past, he had not just begun his last day. “Move! Now!”

The pair listened, all of them running, the rolling clouds of dust kicked up by the fighter attack providing some cover. Outside, MEND soldiers, their wives, children, grandparents, other relatives and friends sprinted in all directions, fleeing the violent chaos that seemed to have no end.

Realizing they could run into a trap, Peel forced himself to project forward, to consider how he would lead an assault on this stronghold. Ideally, he realized, the enemy would have posted soldiers outside each exit, ready with machine guns to strafe anyone who fled the complex. When Peel and his companions neared an exit, he blocked the others with his arm, preventing them from running outside. Confirmation of Peel’s fears came as gunfire tore apart the women and children ahead of them.

“Oh dear,” shrieked Alhazred. “How can they… What can we do?”

De Molina shook her head, suggesting at least some of her hearing had returned. Looking toward Peel as she spoke, she answered, “Mr. Peel is right, Jamal. We’ve got to get Nwosu. He’s compromised our position.”

“If he’s still alive,” exclaimed Alhazred.

“Yes, exactly.” Noticing a dead MEND soldier, she grabbed up his Uzi and turned back the way they had come. “Follow me.”

Peel and Alhazred trailed the woman, ducking through several rooms and between the narrow corridors, joining each shanty building still standing. When de Molina stopped before one particular cell, Peel wasted no time in shooting off the lock then kicking down the door. Nwosu cowered in the corner, his blindfold long removed. Bloody and bruised, most of his wounds were around his split, suggesting tortures originating on his other side. Mostly burn marks from cigarettes and electrical wires.

“What’s happening,” he cried. “Why is Volkov hurting me?” As Peel grabbed Nwosu, helped him to stand, the man gushed tears, admitting, “I told him.”

“Told him what?”

“Where we are. He would not stop burning me until I told him where you had me.”

“And what exactly did you tell him?”

“This is Yenagoa, yes? I knew this place, long ago. As a child.” Peel looked to Alhazred and de Molina. An empty constricting sensation took hold of his gut when they both nodded, glum expressions on their faces.

“How long ago did you crack?”

“Perhaps… fifteen minutes,” he cried. “I tried not to tell him, but…”

Then Nwosu convulsed, and Peel could not find it within himself to blame the sobbing half-man. Peel was just now realizing what horrors Volkov had subjected the sobbing wretch to. Trying to pull himself together, Nwosu asked, “Do you think it is possible?”

“What?”

“That you, or someone, might rejoin me with my other half?”

“That is the plan,” offered Alhazred speaking from the hallway where he was watching for approaching soldiers.

While the others worked to help Nwosu, Peel estimated the time since the first attack at approximately ten minutes. As he did so, he realized it would have taken the Nigerian military far longer to mobilize a strike force of the magnitude to hit the compound as they had. Half a day was a more realistic estimate of response time.

“Nwosu, it wasn’t you. Someone else gave away our position.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes.” As Alhazred steadied the dissected Nigerian, Peel said, “But, we can discuss it later. Right now, we have to get out of here.”

The quartet moved through the tightness of the adjoining buildings as quickly as possible, searching for an unguarded exit. Rubble or craters blocked many of their paths. Corpses were everywhere, splattered with blood, with gaping wounds and shattered bones. In their persistence they eventually found a potential escape route from the chaos, but their enemy had blocked the road outside. Through windows of shattered glass, the group spied Nigerian soldiers engaged in gun battle with a few surviving MEND rebels. Bullets cut through the clouds of debris and artillery smoke. Most of the dead they could see were civilians, filled with bloody bullet holes and charred with burns. The unmistakable tap-tap sounds of machine gun fire never ceased.

“This is horrible,” Alhazred did nothing to mask his distress. “I didn’t want this to happen at all.”

“Our wishes are often of little consequence in this world,” de Molina countered, “and we still need to get out of here, unless you want to join them.”

Peel pointed his M16 through a shattered window. He considered firing, but realized he could not stop nearly enough of the enemy before they determined his position and turned their attention toward Peel and the others.

De Molina said, “Peel, there are things that I can do, but I would prefer a less… noticeable… answer. Do you have a way out of this?”

Staring down the sight of his rifle, Peel took in his surroundings. The room they were in was empty. Once out of bullets, they would have nothing with which to fight.

Then, before Peel could offer any response, Nwosu cried out, “Joan!”

“What is it, Chiwetel,” de Molina asked, bending close to the half-man to hear him over the constant hammering of machine gun fire.

“They’re taking me outside.”

“Who’s taking you outside?”

“Two men. Two… No four halved men, spliced together in pairs. They, they’re leading me up the side of an oil tank, somewhere in the jungle?”

Peel’s head snapped towards the tortured man. “What did you say?”

“A tank,” Nwosu answered. “I’m being taken up on top of an oil tank.”

Peel felt his stomach sink again. A coldness spread through him when he realized what was about to transpire, what he had already caused. Racing to Nwosu, he lifted the remains of the man and propped him against a wall, protected for the moment from the bullets by the cement and brick barrier. He stared into Chiwetel Nwosu line of vision until he had his full attention. Then, gripping the man’s hand, he said, “Chiwetel, I want you to listen to me, okay?”

The teary man nodded.

“You love your family?”

As Nwosu nodded again, Peel made a quick calculation on how long the half-man had to live.

“You have a beautiful wife?” Nwosu nodded again, confused where Peel was going with this line of conversation.

“Children?”

“A boy… and three girls.”

“I bet they’re beautiful children too, right?”

“Yes. Yes, I love them all.”

“Great, well you’re going to be with them very soon.” It was, of course, a lie, but it was all Peel had in him to offer. “But I need you to trust me, okay?” As Nwosu nodded once more, Peel said, “I want you to sit here, behind this wall where it’s safe. This very sturdy stone wall will protect you. You think you can do that?”

Another nod.

“And I want you to think about your family and being together again. You can do that?”

Nwosu said that he could.

“I need you to wait until Jamal, Joan, and I find a way out of here. Jamal told me there is a trapdoor that leads to the river, but we need to find it under all this rubble. That means we need all hands to dig. You think you can wait that long until we uncover it?”

Nwosu half-shuddered and half-nodded. He was smiling, but his eyes were gushing water. He was not so naïve not to know Peel was up to no good, but he wanted to believe in hope instead.

“Great, we’ll be back in a minute.”

Peel grabbed Jamal and de Molina, forced them into the next room, and the next, aware that the government soldiers were only a dozen meters from them now.

“You left him to die,” Alhazred exclaimed, hot with anger. “I thought you cared more than that.”

“I do.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“All that I can.” When Alhazred simply stared, Peel told him, “Nwosu is already dead. He died yesterday.”

A new explosion swallowed Alhazred’s response, closer and more violent than all those previous. A blinding fireball gouged its way through the streets, flooding through the rooms and corridors of the MEND stronghold. Instantly the air filled with the gagging smell of incinerating flesh as the terrible flames blackening everything within a hundred meters of poor, dead Chiwetel Nwosu.

“You knew,” said de Molina, looking at Peel with a modicum of respect for the first time.

“I suspected,” he answered, struggling to catch his breath. Alhazred stare at Peel for a moment, his eyes revealing he was both trying to consider all that had happened, and to determine what they should do next.

“Now,” Peel answered as the fireball finally burned itself out, “Now we really move.”

The three ran past the burning corpses and shelled troop carriers and trucks, searching the smoke-filled streets until they found an abandoned car. One smashed window later, Peel had hot-wired the ignition. Seconds later, the trio were speeding through the wetness and humidity of the Delta’s jungles, their wheels grinding the remains of the dead into the damp earth.

——

From her passenger seat, Joan de Molina watched a furious Peel speed them from the combat zone. His knuckles on the steering were white with strain, his teeth clenched harshly together. She recognized his look. It was that of a man ready to choke someone to death with his bare hands, yet equally ready to collapse into a catatonic state. She knew he was wound dangerously tight at that moment.

Alhazred said, “For the love of God, what happened back there?”

Joan glanced at Alhazred through his rear-view mirror. The man had lost his fez, and the blood dried to the side of his head highlighted his deepening bruises. “Yes, Mr. Peel… so many dead, innocent and guilty mixed together. How do you explain leaving Chiwetel behind?”

The Australian’s voice went cold as he confessed, “It took me a while to realize it… that was Nwosu on the roof of the tank, yesterday. I shot that tank. I killed him.”

Alhazred struggled to grasp what Peel was saying.

“You said that was yesterday. Nwosu died today.”

“Volkov tore Nwosu in half. He dissected him in time and space with something akin to a wormhole. One half split one day into the future.”

“So,” de Molina offered, “poor Chiwetel told Volkov where we were today, but Volkov received the information yesterday.”

Peel nodded. “And I killed him.”

De Molina did not bother to respond. She could see both sides of Peel. The part that felt remorse for Nwosu’s death, but the cold killer who had performed the deed as well. The words coming out of his mouth made him sound rational and compassionate, but she knew as he did that his actions were precise and calculated. Nodding to herself, she asked, “You blame yourself?”

“No,” Peel spat through grinding teeth. “I blame Pavel Volkov. He created the half-plus-half soldiers — no, prisoners. One half out there killing, the other half in a cell somewhere, held in the past, providing eyewitness accounts and accurate intelligence on future events.”

“That, that…” Alhazred stuttered. “I-it, it’s… as brilliant as it is diabolical.”

“Volkov’s a Shoggoth,” Peel offered. “He has to be. Do either of you know what I’m talking about? What a Shoggoth is?”

Alhazred nodded that he did, and shuddered at the mention of their name. De Molina, however, had never heard the term, and admitted as much to Peel. When he explained to her what they were, she nodded unconsciously. “Another horror for a universe already overflowing. I have seen such before. And what does this batch want?”

“For a long time, Shoggoths were slaves to another alien race. Now that they’re free creatures, they want to enslave humanity and become rulers of their own. Volkov’s experiments are just one way they’re trying to accomplish this. To enslave us, I mean.”

Peel did not look at either of his passengers. Instead, he only stared at the road before him, careful not to hit any people as they walked along the side of the road, or running across the road in front of them, but furious enough to give speed to their journey.

“So, what do you want to do now, Harrison?”

De Molina tried out the Peel’s first name to better connect with him. His reaction surprised her. Slamming on the brakes, Peel pulled over and then turned to stare at her intensely. Gone was every trace of the humanity which had crept into his demeanor. Suddenly he was cold. Solitary. Once more the impersonal killer they all needed at that moment.

“You drive,” he commanded. “Take me to Zouga.”

“Why,” she asked, praying she had assessed his character correctly.

“Because I’m too wound up. I don’t want to cause an accident.”

“Why not, Mr. Peel?”

“Because if I cripple or kill myself in some stupid wreck, then I can’t hunt Volkov. And if I can’t hunt him, I can’t have the satisfaction of finishing him once and for all. Also, I don’t want to injure either you or Jamal, or any civilians out there, so I need you to drive.”

Smiling, de Molina stepped from the vehicle and circled it, coming up on the driver’s side. Leaning on the broken window, pressing the flesh of one arm against the broken glass, she reached in with the other, and stroked Peel’s cheek with her fingers. “Now, there’s the Harrison Peel I’ve been waiting for.” Pushing him with the same hand, she added, “So, move over. Let us go kill the thing and see if it actually makes a difference in this foul world.”

——

Her arms crossed, leaning against the wall, de Molina watched as Peel argued with the doctors. The Australian kept arguing that Akabuka hospital was no good. Zouga was going to lose his leg, responded the doctors, and there was nothing they could do about it. They simply did not possess the skills or infrastructure to perform complicated operations, nothing that would achieve more than a clean amputation.

As the anger on both sides bubbled to the boiling point, de Molina wondered if Peel would actually strike one of the Nigerian doctors. She did not blame Peel for his concern. Zouga was his friend, and trapped in a rundown, filthy medical center. There was grime on the floors and bugs skittered across when they thought no one was watching, and the medical supplies were well past their expiration dates or non-existent. But this, she knew, was how Africa lived every day, doing the best they could with little or no resources and funding. Looked at from that perspective, the hospital performed better than most.

The woman heard Alhazred approaching long before he came within her line of vision. He too studied Peel with interested eyes, but not for the same reasons as the Pirate Queen.

“What do you make of our Australian friend,” asked the Moroccan. De Molina considered her answer. A multitude of responses offered themselves up within her mind. Knowing that most would only inspire more questions from Alhazred, she said, “I think his heart is in the right place.”

“I believe I agree.”

“What brings you to that conclusion?”

“He wants to pay to fly Zouga to Lagos. He’s arranged for a hospital there to perform an operation to save his leg.”

“That would cost a fortune.” When the Moroccan merely nodded, she asked, “So where’s he getting the money from?”

“He did not say. But you know these spies, with their secret accounts stashed away for emergencies.”

As de Molina watched, the doctor walked away from Peel in frustration. Peel then slumped in a waiting chair, burying his head in his hands. The man looked to her to be ready to collapse from exhaustion.

Perhaps sensing that he was being watched, Peel stood and marched to Zouga’s bed. Sitting next to the mercenary, he remained silent, simply staring for a moment. Zouga was still conscious, but the horrible pain etched into his face showed there was nothing pleasant in the fact. After a moment Peel reached over and gripped Zouga’s hands, holding them tight as if they were brothers.

“I can’t lose my leg,” Zouga grumbled through a clenched jaw. “I have a wife and five children. Five children, Peel!”

“I know.”

“I can’t work without a leg.”

“I know,” Peel shouted. “I’m arranging it now.”

Frustration and anger fueling his movements, Peel shot up out of his visitor’s chair, knocking it to the ground. As he moved past de Molina and Alhazred, she reached out to touch him as he moved by. “Calm yourself. You’re so tightly wound no one is going to take you seriously.”

Peel stared at her, then through her. His eyes were bloodshot and unblinking. “I have to do something. There’s going to be a shitload of casualties brought here soon, from the massacre at Yenagoa. When that happens, my friend will be ignored.”

“No one will ignore him. Jamal and I are here too, remember?”

Peel laughed. It was a dark and rumbling sound, a noise edging toward madness. “Oh, that’s different, isn’t it? You and Jamal are here. That solves everything.” Pressing his hands into his forehead, where blood vessels pulsed, he looked like he was about to explode internally. “It solves every fucking thing!”

Peel cried out in surprise as de Molina’s open palm slammed against his face. He had not seen her move. Neither had Alhazred. As the Australian took a step back, unable to react as the emotions raging within him boiled his brain, she told him, “Get a grip, Mr. Peel. You can’t help anyone this way.”

“No,” Peel answered, his voice nearly a whisper. “I can’t, can I? No one.”

“That’s not what I meant—”

“Doesn’t matter. There’s no… nobody can…”

He looked around the room. Suddenly his exhaustion caught up to him in a roaring motion. The energy draining from him without warning, Peel fell forward into de Molina’s arms. She caught him easily enough, lowering him gently into a nearby chair. Righting the one he had knocked over, she sat next to him.

“You’re just tired—”

“I couldn’t save Nicola. I’ve ruined Moses’ life. Volkov is going—”

“Stop it,” the Pirate Queen hissed at Peel. “We will stop Volkov, and we will take care of Zouga. I could not hear your conversation with the doctors, but they said there was a way—”

“Oh, yes,” agreed Peel, his voice slipping toward the mad laughter once more. “They can get a helicopter in here to take him to Lagos. All the care he needs. Yeah, they sure can.”

De Molina asked, “How much?”

“A mere two hundred and fifty thousand Euros.” Peel went quiet for a moment, then added, “I told them I’ve got two hundred and ten thousand Euros, but that’s it. That’s everything. All I have.”

De Molina said nothing, holding her breath unconsciously. Waiting for the Australian to finish his thought.

“They said ‘no.’ It wasn’t enough.” As tears formed in his eyes, Peel whispered, “Every time, all I have… it’s never enough.”

“Damnit.”

She stared at Peel, knowing that he would not understand her meaning. He locked eyes with hers. He watched as her eyes shrank to slits, then closed. They remained that way for a moment, then opened once more.

“All right. Wait here. I’ll take care of your friend.”

Peel made to protest, but the Pirate Queen walked away from him, heading toward the area where Zouga waited. As Peel watched, he looked simply too tired to move. De Molina sat down next to Peel’s friend, talked to him in a reassuring manner. As she continued on, taking the sergeant’s hand, touching his leg, Alhazred sat next to Peel. She listened discretely to what they had to say.

“You know, Mr. Peel, you remind me of a man I knew a long time ago, in Cairo.”

“Is that so?”

“He was a soldier like you, and on a mission against the forces of what you might call ‘cosmic horrors’, again, like you. I told him to be careful, or, at least, I should have. I should have told him to walk away, but I couldn’t.”

Peel seemed to ponder Alhazred’s words. The man’s temperament was calming, soothing Peel’s repressed anxiety. “So you want to tell me now, when you have the opportunity, that I should walk away?”

Alhazred shook his head. “The man I am telling you of, he was trying to save someone else. Someone he cared about. That was why I didn’t stop him. His was a noble venture to protect others, so how could I stop him? I hope you protect whoever it is you seek to protect. But I also hope that the cost is not too great for you.”

Peel took a deep breath. “What happened, to this soldier in Cairo?”

“He vanished. Most likely murdered in a massacre that transpired a short time later in the city. I really do not know what happened to him. I hope, Mr. Peel, that I do not end up not knowing what happens to you.”

Peel nodded. “I’m going to stop Volkov, then Coaldale, and then… I don’t know. But if I survive through all this, I’ll drop you an email. I’ll let you know what ‘happened’ to me.”

“I would like that.”

Alhazred then hugged Peel. At first Peel resisted, then finally relented and allowed the simple act of kindness to transpire. De Molina thought he looked uncomfortable, that physical contact was not something he was used to. But such thoughts were not important right now, not if she were to save Moses Zouga. Her attention focused back on him.

——

It took de Molina ten minutes to do what she needed to do with Zouga, so returned to Peel and Jamal.

“So, Mr. Peel, are you ready to leave?”

“Not without taking care of Moses.”

“I have taken care of the sergeant already.”

Peel looked at the woman, then at Zouga. For the first time since the attack in the jungle, his friend seemed at peace and free of pain. Turning his attention back to de Molina, he was about to question what had happened when she cut him off, asking Alhazred to take charge of moving the sergeant to a safer location. The Moroccan had no better understanding of Zouga’s sudden improvement than did Peel, but Peel knew time for all of them was running out, and that he could ask questions later.

“Save your strength,” said de Molina. “You’ll need it. I know what you want to ask, and I will tell you. You are aware of Mr. Theodore London, of New York City? Yes?” When Peel nodded, she continued, her voice dropping to the barest of whispers. “Of course. How could you know as you do and not know of him? Well, I know him as well. To be brief, I fell in love with him. And he with me. It was not a natural love, but one created by accident, created by powers beyond the ken of most. Do not try to understand. I was part of it, and sometimes I do not understand.”

“But… Moses—”

“Yes, your friend will not lose his leg. My encounter with Mr. London left me with…” de Molina paused, smiling sadly. Her hesitation lasted only an instant, but Peel saw pain in her eyes worse than anything he had ever felt. “Let us just say,” she continued, “abilities. I do not choose to use them often. In truth, I do not care enough for your friend to spare him. People are in misery every moment of the day. It will never end. This is, as a friend of mine might say, a true thing, and I do not choose to spend my life trying to disprove it.”

“I…”

De Molina placed a finger against Peel’s lips. The motion not only silenced him, but he felt something in her touch. From just the casual brushing, flesh against flesh, he felt his head clearing, his vision restored. The ringing in his ears from the previous battle faded, as did his fatigue.

“Yes… once turned on, it is sometimes hard to turn off. Once the power gets into you, it wants to be used.”

“But,” asked Peel, “why wouldn’t you? I mean—”

“I know what you mean,” she told him, emphasizing her whisper to remind him she wished not to be overheard. “Since I understand how startling this must be, although our time is running out, I will give you an example. It is very hot here, is it not?”

Peel nodded in agreement.

“Well, what do you think, should I make it cooler?” When he simply stared, she asked again, “Shall I? Shall I lower the temperature, curb the humidity? Merely for my comfort? Yes, certainly such would play havoc with the atmosphere, bring the local weather patterns to chaos, but it’s for my convenience?” Before Peel protested, de Molina held up a warning finger. “I have just shared a confidence with you I have told no other. Even my poor sweet Theodore does not know what he did to me. I have… powers… you cannot imagine, that I will not use except in the most extreme cases.”

“But, when MEND captured us before… they made you strip… you let them—”

“Oh, Cheri… the flesh is of no concern. But my humanity is. I will not risk losing it simply to perform tricks. No matter on what level, the use of power has consequences. And…” The woman paused for a moment, her personality fading as she lost herself in some distant memory. “And, I will speak no more of this now. We have things to do.”

“Like…”

“Like,” she cooed, “when I was on that offshore platform, I gained access to Gerard Fischer’s files. One of those files contained payment transactions for a luxury apartment in Port Harcourt, made out in the name of one ‘Captain’ Godswill Osoba.”

“Great.” Peel blinked. De Molina imagined what occupied his thoughts in this moment. His friend would live, whole and healed, and it wouldn’t cost Peel all his savings to achieve that outcome. Alhazred would take Moses to safety, and then Peel would leave with de Molina to track down Volkov. In addition, Peel would find himself renewed physically and mentally, a gift from the Pirate Queen which she had seemingly given as easily as most folks might shake hands.

Standing, as a smile filled Peel’s face so wide, de Molina tried out his first name a second time, asking him, “So, what’s on your mind, Harrison?”

“My mind,” he answered, still smiling. “My mind says we need to secure ourselves some weapons.”

“Then we must think alike,” answered de Molina, “because that, as they say, I have covered.”

——

It was an old spy’s trick, to bury caches of weapons in out of the way locations for emergency missions. Before she had left his side, Zouga had provided de Molina with the GPS coordinates of one such drop. The cache was where he said it was buried one hundred meters off a minor road on the outskirts of Port Harcourt, inside a shell of a hotel complex that was little more than a steel frame two stories high. The building, like so many others in the area, would never reach completion because the investors had run out of money. Peel and de Molina dug quickly, and within twenty minutes the soft earth produced a sealed crate.

Inside were five Browning Hi-Power 9mm semi-automatic pistols, two Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine guns, Kevlar vests, a case of fragment grenades and several commando knives. Peel did not become excited until he unearthed an RPG-7, an anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

De Molina crossed her arms. “You look like a five-year-old boy opening presents at Christmas.”

Peel lifted two RPG-7 missiles. “These are thermobaric.”

De Molina shrugged. “Why does that make them special?”

“Only one thing I know puts down a Shoggoth for good, and that’s intense heat.”

“Those are hot explosives?”

“It’s a fuel-air explosive, it burns longer and hotter than conventional grenades. Which is exactly what we need.”

De Molina smiled, but not at him. “You know the powers I have inherited, they can be a terrible burden, and I’ve never revealed their existence to anyone before. I don’t know why I told you.” She laughed then. “Perhaps it was pity. Or maybe I like you.”

“Which might also be pity,” he replied.

“Possibly,” she agreed, and they had both laughed, and that had been the end of it.

Several hours later, armed and armored, the pair covered each other as they took to the back alleys towards Osoba’s Port Harcourt townhouse, the pre-dawn light of morning guiding them. The property proved quite exclusive, cut off as it was from the world by its surrounding walls, two-and-a-half meters in height. The exclusiveness partially maintained by the fact the walls were solid brick with broken glass embedded along their crown.

Peel withdrew his MP5 submachine gun from the bags they brought to conceal their weapons. He had left the RPG-7 in their car, locked up and hidden. Although he wished to bring it with him, the weapon was too cumbersome and dangerous in a confined urban townhouse intrusion. Placing the Browning 9mm in his waistband, he checked the two fragment grenades, making certain they were secure within the pouches of his flak vest. Explosives were a better weapon against Shoggoths than bullets because of the alien monstrosities’ unnatural ability to heal rapidly. A bullet was a single wound. A grenade covered a large surface area. Flame was best because it kept burning.

“High walls,” said Peel as they approached. “Too smooth to climb, and candy-coated. So how shall we get in?”

De Molina stepped up to the back entrance and, using a few simple lock-picking tools, had the door sprung in under five seconds.

“Forget I asked.”

Peel moved inside first. The Pirate Queen followed. They had their weapons ready because they were expecting guards, yet they found the way clear. The swimming pool lapped gently despite there being no breeze. Several firearms lay discarded on the paths but with no traces of them being used, such as spent shells. Cigarette butts and half-empty bottles of beer were everywhere. One cigarette filter discarded on the concrete path looked to have been dropped half-smoked, because embers lined up where it had fallen. A Honda 250cc motorcycle leaned against one wall, keys in the ignition. No one around to drive it.

“I am assuming we don’t like what we are seeing,” whispered de Molina.

Peel nodded. The pair moved on silently. Inside the main building, the desertion was just as eerie. A half-eaten steak lay out on the kitchen table, flies buzzing around it. Once they cleared the ground floor, they headed upstairs where they found ‘Captain’ Godswill Osoba.

The man stretched out on his large flesh-colored leather lounge, his plasma television running with a British cooking show and the sound turned down low. When Peel placed the muzzle of his weapon into the side of the MEND leader’s head, he barely moved. De Molina reached down and relieved the man of the two .357 Magnums on his lap, just out of reach of his hands resting on the leather. Osoba stared at them but didn’t move.

“Just do it,” he said with a voice that held no energy.

“Just do what?”

“Shoot me, now, and end it.”

Peel recognized a man who had lost all hope, terrified to the point of believing there was no such thing as salvation in his future. De Molina stepped around the lounge, so Osoba could see her properly. She had her Browning sidearm raised, ready for a close and personal shot. “Why did you do it?” she demanded.

Osoba’s eyes were all that moved. “Why did I do what?”

“Sell out your own people, to Volkov.”

The African paramilitary soldier snorted. “You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

“God willing, I thought it might do some good. I thought I might be a hero to my people.”

“How did you figure that?”

“It was just a few, at first,” he said, barely moving. “Give up a few of the trouble-makers to Volkov, snitches in MEND, and in return WGI would give us jobs. Clean up the oil spills. Build hospitals and schools.”

“And did they?” Peel asked, actually curious. Something about the situation did not ring true to him, and he wanted to keep Osoba talking.

Showing with his eyes to the glass on the coffee table, full with palm wine, and the still mostly full bottle next to it, the captain asked, “What do you think?”

De Molina pushed her pistol muzzle into Osoba’s face. “Your victims paid for all of this though, didn’t they?” She spat her words at him like they were weapons themselves. “This townhouse, bought with blood money. I’m talking about good people like Chiwetel Nwosu.”

“You have no idea,” Osoba responded with equal venom. “When you live in the devil’s land, he is the only trader you can bargain with.”

“Get up,” de Molina ordered.

“I can’t.”

She grabbed him by the shirt, pulling him with her full strength. She could not move him.

Peel shouted, “Oh, shit!” He reached for Osoba as well, but he was too late. Without warning, the chair inflated, twisting and contorting to fold around a screaming Osoba. Arachnid-like hands flowed from the flesh-colored leather, holding the captain immobile while the material closed like a jaw, breaking all the bones in the man’s neck and back, splattering Peel and Molina with blood. Then he ceased screaming.

Despite the shock of trying to immobilize him, Peel leaped back, putting distance between himself and the horror even as he watched it transform. In the space of a trio of heartbeats the fleshy trap reformed, building from the legs up, taking on the shape of a man. A fat man.

A fat man both Peel and de Molina recognized.

“Joan! Behind me!”

The Pirate Queen was ready. The MP5 submachine gun slung over one arm and the 9mm pistol in her other hand, she fired both without hesitation. Bullet after bullet impacted into the fleshy shape, wriggling coils that flickered violently, forming themselves as an arm here, a leg there, belly in the middle. Soon a laughing grin formed, swimming upward through the darkening flesh all about it. Searching to settle itself under the deep pits congealing into black eyes. Black eyes that somehow laughed.

Despite the force and thunder thrown against it, the blob slithered into the repulsive slovenly shape of Pavel Volkov. Recreating its familiar face amidst the storm of lead had left it not as refined as usual. There was an obviousness to its alien nature now. But that slight defect made it no less formidable than the Shoggoth that lived as Coaldale. Or the Shoggoth that had tracked Peel in Queensland. Or any of the other hell-things that might wander loose across the world.

When de Molina’s weapons were empty, she dropped both and stepped backwards. As she brushed against Peel, watching the smoke of her attack filter upward, the thing before them spoke.

“You finished now, little lady?”

The words slimed from Volkov’s still forming mouth, effervescent liquid spewing through the jaws that refused to fall into sync with one another. De Molina glanced toward the door, but the Volkov-thing launched a cannonball-sized appendage past, driving it into the concrete wall next to her.

“Stay a while. Chat.”

Peel had his submachine gun ready. He could have shot at the mass of alien corruption easily enough, but he knew it would do no good. It would just reform once more, as it did that moment after enduring the Pirate Queen’s attack. There had to be another weapon to use against it, he told himself, otherwise they were both dead.

As Peel frantically scanned the room looking for an escape, Peel noted Volkov’s eyes. Caught the way they were looking over de Molina, scanning her up and down. A tongue the length of a snake licked his fat, pulsating lips.

“You waited for us,” Peel shouted, working to draw the monster’s attention from de Molina. The back of his mind replaying the horror of the Coaldale-thing slaughtering Nicola. He had no idea if the woman would use her powers, if she even had the power to repel the monster before them. But he knew what the scent of gasoline on the air meant.

“Very astute, Peel.”

If there was one sensation forever burned into his mind, it was the distinguishing odor of a Shoggoth on the hunt.

“This was a trap.”

Volkov turned to Peel. His half human, half alien tentacle-infested shape grinned at the Australian with an impossibly large mammalian mouth, and one filled with oddly jagged teeth and fangs. “And you walked right into it.”

As the creature slurred its words at Peel, he tried to remain calm, to not reveal that he had found himself a hope. A slim one, but one worth attempting. Masking his movement with what he hoped looked like fear, he moved to position himself, shouting at the same time. “I have to tell you, Volkov, I’m flattered.” Hand on his weapon, forgetting about it as he moved into position, he threw out his distraction. “I thought you Shoggoths were beyond mere human emotions, the new masters — beyond right and wrong, hope or redemption — certainly not given to something as petty as revenge.”

“All that interests me… is self-preservation.”

“What?” Peel laughed at the thing. “You seriously consider me a threat to your existence?”

“You forget Peel,” Volkov answered in all seriousness. “I’ve seen the future. It is a necessity for you to not be a part of it.”

Having the shot he wanted, Peel wasted not a second in firing his MP5 into the support beam above Volkov. Only three seconds of trigger threw several rounds into the brace. The support cracked, then crumbled in the next second. The rain of steel and concrete that followed smashed into Volkov with brutal force, causing an avalanche as the floor shuddered and collapsed, dragging the thing down to the ground floor.

Peel had just enough time to grab de Molina before she tumbled into the rubble with Volkov. Together, they sprinted for the exit, raced downstairs and out into the yard, past the pool and the discarded weapons. Past the beers and cigarettes of the missing guards, who must have been earlier snacks for the perversity that was Pavel Volkov.

On the street Peel realized he had de Molina’s hand tight in his left, the right throttling the grip of his 9mm sidearm. He could hear Volkov throwing rubble in its effort to extract itself from the still crumbling apartment.

“The RPG,” de Molina shouted, pulling Peel along toward the car in which they had arrived. The pair crossed the remaining distance in seconds, only to have a two-meter-wide wall fragment from Osoba’s apartment propel through the air and smash the vehicle, crushing it. Realizing what was coming next, Peel dragged the Pirate Queen behind a parked vehicle as the warheads detonated. Fire and flying metal filled the street. Windows shattered in every direction.

“So what now?” growled Peel in shocked frustration. When he received no answer, he turned to where he had left de Molina, only to see a second wall segment flying straight toward him. The agent felt the ragged edges of the concrete slab tear through his shirt as it barely missed him, obliterating the wall of a house behind him.

“Joan!”

He received his answer in the form of the Pirate Queen speeding toward him, riding the Honda 250cc motorcycle they had passed earlier. As she spun in close to Peel, he jumped on board behind her without hesitation. And, as de Molina gunned the engine, through the gap in the wall appeared the monstrous form of Pavel Volkov.

“Go, go! Go!”

De Molina needed no encouragement. She wisely risked losing speed to shift her forward pattern, barely avoiding a gigantic super-powered fist that flew down the street from behind them. As Volkov’s appendage splattered through an oncoming car, she abandoned the main road, tearing down the first side street that appeared. Twisting her way through the littered, muddy back roads for as long as she dared, the Pirate Queen finally threw them back onto the main road, praying they had put sufficient distance between themselves and their inhuman enemy. Moving out onto the highway, de Molina ducked between the traffic as she gunned the engine. “Can you see Volkov?”

Peel looked behind them, but saw nothing. “Not yet,” he answered, “But he’ll be chasing us.”

“Most definitely.”

Peel turned again, just in time to see a car sailing through the air on a direct collision course.

“Bank left, now!”

De Molina swerved violently as the airborne car collided with the rear of a bread truck. The hatchback tore through the delivery vehicle, destroying it, crushing its driver.

“Mother of God,” cried the Pirate Queen.

Looking backwards again, Peel saw Volkov, or at least what had to be him. The Shoggoth had transformed into a blur of blackish flesh, a thing of all mouths and tentacles and greenish eyes, a galloping, shapeless mass bounding down the highway. Terrified commuters raced to the side of the road to let the horror pass. Peel could tell the Volkov-thing was moving fast. Faster than their motorcycle. Volkov obliterated more drivers as it slammed their vehicles aside, crushing or overturning them in his urgency to reach Peel and de Molina. The thing would be on them in minutes.

Frantically, Peel checked his weapons. One 9mm pistol and two grenades. He knew neither could bring down the Shoggoth, and would barely slow it. Then, seeing a sign he could translate, he screamed into de Molina’s ear. “There! Over there.” Pointing, he added, “Drive into that cement plant!”

The Pirate Queen nodded as she cut off the main road, weaving toward the massive plant. Behind them, the city was in chaos. Sirens had filled the air, as did the horrendous cries of Volkov’s further victims. As fire and blood and agony painted the world just behind them.

De Molina shouted, “What’s your plan?”

“See that batching plant,” he cried, pointing once more. “Drive under it.”

The center was active at that moment, processing hundreds of tons of cement for construction sites across the city. As they closed on the plant, Peel fired his Browning into the air several times. He hoped it would be enough to frighten the workers in the area into deserting their posts. It was the only chance they had to survive.

As Peel turned once more, he saw Volkov racing behind them, closing. Its shifting shape the size of a horse. Peel stared unblinking at the thing’s salivating muzzle; its chomping fangs eager to tear them both to pieces.

“Peel?”

“Under that hopper.”

De Molina did as Peel demanded. Once beneath the support structure, Peel tossed both grenades upward into the pipe lattice leading to the horizontal mixer. Volkov noticed the motion and panicked, desperately trying to halt his forward motion. The only thing the monstrosity accomplished was slowing itself to halt where it was directly under the massive mix assembly at the moment of detonation. The twin explosions were virtually simultaneous, creating just enough destructive force to collapse the main steel supports.

As Peel had hoped, the plant was old, had stood for years beyond its time. Before Volkov could react, the entire structure caved inward on itself and the horror beneath, a hundred tons or more of steel, wet concrete, pumps, conveyer belts and motors smashing against the iron-reinforced cement beneath. A hundred meters beyond the carnage, de Molina turned the motorcycle and braked. Both Peel and she looked expectantly, waiting for the monster to crawl from the wreckage. Second after tense second, nothing stirred.

“You think it killed him,” the woman finally asked.

“Maybe,” said Peel, shaking his head. “Or we just put enough weight on it to bury him for some time.”

“Years?”

“Let’s be optimistic and say centuries. In the meantime, I’ll make some arrangements back in the US to ensure no one cleans up this mess. Or buries it deeper.”

“I guess I should thank you, for saving my life.”

“Yeah.” Peel laughed without humor. “Something tells me you don’t need a lot of saving. But, I’ll just be gracious and say ‘you’re welcome.’”

“So gallant, you are, monsieur Peel.”

“A gentleman from top to bottom. That’s me. But a gentleman who thinks perhaps we should get out of here, before the police and the State Security Service turn up. They’ll arrest us for this mess.”

Tossing a laugh over her shoulder, de Molina gunned the engine, driving away fast. The pair headed east, stopping only for fuel and food, and to change drivers, until they reached the rain forests of Cross River National Park where they could make an illegal border crossing into the relative safety of Cameroon.

——

London, England

The eighth floor of the Westmorton Building offered a panoramic view of the Thames River and greater metropolitan London. De Molina watched the gray overcast skyline and the gray-white buildings characteristic of the city from a plush leather chair central to the large modern office of Gerard Fischer. It was six in the morning, so the chances of her and Peel being disturbed by any WGI Petroleum employees were negligible. Peel’s skills and contacts had gained them the pass codes to enter without security noticing, and the means to arrange for Fischer to come in early, for a faked telephone conference with the WGI Sydney office.

When Fischer entered, carrying his briefcase in one hand and overcoat draped over the other, he expressed a mixed response of loathing and fear when he caught de Molina staring back at him. She was in his chair spinning it left to right, right to left, trying it out.

“You bitch!”

“Ah, it is always so nice you remember me,” she said with a grin.

“If this is some kind of prank, it’s abhorrent.”

“Pranks are for children,” she snapped back at him, her tone suddenly dark and ugly, “not people given up to Pavel Volkov.”

De Molina saw recognition flash through his eyes finally. Pulling his cell phone from his jacket pocket, he announced, “I’m calling security.”

Fischer let out a yip of shock as he felt something cold and circular pressed into the back of his neck. His eyes flashing sideways, he saw Peel in the mirror on the wall opposite, a 9mm tight in his hand. The WGI manager’s color drained as he held out his phone, which Peel took, placing it in his pocket.

“You won’t get away with this.”

“I disagree,” De Molina giggled, giving Fischer’s chair another spin. “You might believe that I’m no threat to you, but Mr. Peel here is a highly connected intelligence operative. If you do not do as we instruct, to the letter, you will be, completely and utterly ruined — financially, socially and legally — by… what would you say, Harrison… by dinner?”

“Lunchtime.”

Peel smiled at Fischer as he patted the Englishman down, finding no weapons as they had expected.

“Sit down, Fischer,” ordered de Molina. The man did as he was told. Peel kept his weapon pointed at his head.

“What do you want? Money?”

The Pirate Queen laughed. “That’s the mistake your kind always makes, isn’t it? You corporate executive types, thinking all others are exactly like you, motivated only by greed.”

“What do you want then?”

“You reneged on your deal, Mr. Fischer.”

“What deal?”

De Molina felt hurt that he genuinely had no idea what they were discussing, but not surprised. “Your deal with Godswill Osoba.”

“That pathetic excuse for a terrorist is dead.” Fischer’s forced laughter loaded with contempt. “Brutally massacred by his own people, is what I hear.”

“Volkov murdered him.”

“Bollocks!”

“Regardless of how he died, you promised to do right by his people.”

“I promised no such thing.”

De Molina shook her head, made loud ‘tsking’ noises to emphasize just how disappointed she was with the oil executive. “This is the deal Fischer, I have a list.” She pushed forward a page with the typed names of MEND families suffering since the recent massacres. “You employ these people in your oil operations. You build schools, you clean up the streets, and the oil spills in the rivers––”

“Preposterous!”

“This is only a start.”

“You think this will wash with the executive team? You think they won’t stop it before it starts?”

Peel chambered a round into his weapon, focusing Fischer’s attention. The manager tried to hide his fear, but he was trembling too noticeably.

“We do not expect WGI to pay for this. We expect you to.”

“With what funds?”

Peel answered this time, whispering in Fischer’s ear. “The one point eight million Euros you’ve accepted in bribes since your assignment to the Niger Delta. You don’t hide things very well.”

“I… I don’t have that money in cash.”

“You have it somewhere.”

“Wh… What? You expect me to sell my house, my car?”

De Molina leaned over Fischer’s desk. “We don’t care if you have to sell your children. Thousands have suffered and died because of you. This entire world could have fallen into darkness because of you.”

“She’s not trifling with you, mate.”

De Molina hissed, “You sad, foul thing. Understand that you are only being allowed to live so you can feel something of what you have done to the world. You will sell all you have, you will make certain every nickel goes to relieve the misery you have caused, or you will know pain and disgrace as you cannot imagine.”

As the two stared at Fischer then, cold and silent, the manager did not say or do anything. After only a few seconds, the pair looked one to another, and Peel nodded. As de Molina nodded back, he took out his phone, his gun never wavering, never moving from Fischer’s head.

“Peel here,” he said. “Phase one authorized.”

“Phase one?” Fischer asked nervously, fear choking his voice. Not bothering to answer the manager, Peel continued speaking into his phone.

“Yes… go ahead and e-mail those photos of Fischer at Godswill’s house party. Yes, with the prostitutes––”

“Wait!” Fischer demanded.

Peel lowered the phone, looked expectantly at the corrupt WGI executive.

“Please don’t do this,” Fischer begged, his head dropping, the sound of sobs breaking from his throat.

De Molina gave the man a long moment to appreciate how utterly trapped he was. When he finally raised his head once more, the look in his eyes told her all she needed to know.

——

Pulling his overcoat tight around his neck and torso, Peel watched his breath turn to vapor and drift off across the Thames. He and de Molina leaned against the stone railing separating Victoria Embankment from the river. The London Eye and Jubilee Gardens were visible over the cold water, although few tourists were out and about in the middle of winter, and so the wheel and gardens were still. The pair nursed coffees, warming their hands with the hot containers.

They’d been standing and drinking silently for some time. Peel was quiet because he felt exhausted, both mentally and physically. The Pirate Queen knew it was what he needed, a fact he recognized and appreciated.

As her drink finally cooled, she asked, “You show every girl you meet such a good time?”

Peel wanted to laugh — almost did — but he could not. The phrase was exactly the one Nicola would have used on him in the same situation. The thought struck him hard, making him realize just how deeply entrenched his sadness was. And the realization that all he had of her now were memories. Burying Pavel Volkov and bringing down WGI’s research program in Nigeria had bought him no solace. “I take it you’re being sarcastic.”

“Playful was what I was trying for.” De Molina brushed aside a strand of hair as the wind continued to blow into her face. “I rarely have this much trouble making men cheerful, you know. It is very discouraging.”

Peel turned, stared off towards the gray horizon. Knowing she was only teasing him, grateful actually, still he changed the subject. “You think Fischer will do what you demanded of him?”

De Molina nudged him gently. “Who knows? But he can’t know we were bluffing. You do work for the NSA. That alone should scare him into action.”

“How did you know about his antics with Godswill?”

“I didn’t,” she admitted, her smile both radiant and mischievous. “I just know what men like Fischer are like.”

Peel sipped at his coffee. It was cold, almost finished, and yet he remained exhausted enough to want another for a second caffeine hit.

“So what do we do now?”

“You can’t go back to Nigeria,” Peel said wearily, wondering why the woman acted as if he had all the answers. “They’ll arrest you the moment you step off a plane. Me too, if I return.”

“I didn’t mean that, and yes, I’m not going back. I mean, what’s next in your line of inquiry?”

Peel threw his empty cup into a public bin. As he looked toward de Molina, a part of his brain noticed she was wearing lipstick. Wondered if she had before, and if he was only just now noticing. Or if she might have done so for him. Shoving such thoughts out of his mind, however, he answered simply, “Now I go after Coaldale.”

“The creature that murdered Nicola?”

Peel shuddered at the question, saying nothing more than an abrupt ‘yes’ in response. De Molina gave him nothing in return. He could tell she knew what he was building toward, what he wanted to say. With a sigh, she braved the cold, giving him a few more moments to find his courage.

Eventually he asked, “You want an honest job?”

“There’s nothing dishonest about those from whom I steal. Still, that’s more of a career than a job.”

“It’s not what I meant. The NSA is always looking for high-quality operators… especially those who know how to handle themselves in the cold, hard face of alien intrusions.”

“You want me into the NSA? But I thought you were operating on your own?”

“Right now, yes, but they’ll take me back. I never really left.”

De Molina almost responded.

“You have to understand,” said Peel, “I read the reports that cross my desk every day. A Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting almost brought down by a cult working out of Central Australia, a US Delta force squad wiped out by a skin infecting weapon in Anah, Iraq, another group calling themselves the Yellow Cross who—”

“Your point?”

“These are all acts of subversive groups that worship monsters like Volkov, and worse. Terrorist organizations that want to bring these monsters into our world, permanently, to destroy it.”

Reaching upward slightly, de Molina kissed Peel gentle on the cheek then stepped back. “Harrison, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I’m going to say ‘no’… for now.”

“I have to ask,” he said, frowning. Hurt. Not knowing why.

“I understand. You want a reason. I have one. But first, I also have a question. Would you like your hair back?” When Peel simply stared at her blankly, she said, “I did not think it was so difficult a query. Do… you… want…”

“I heard you.”

Peel reached upward unconsciously, scratching at his bald head under the beanie he had worn that day against the bitter London weather.

“I could do it, you know. With just a touch, your hair would grow back. Would you like that? Think about it, Harrison. And tell me the truth.”

Peel did. He thought back to when he was a boy, and hair was natural. His mind flashed to images of him in the mirror when he still had hair, of old photographs and home videos, of when he first enlisted with the Australian Army. He also remembered when it started thinning.

“No,” he told her, quietly. Firmly.

“Good.”

“Now why is that good?” he asked. “And why don’t you want to join me?”

“It is a good thing, Cheri, because it means that despite all that has happened to you, you still know who you are. This is very important—”

“To you?”

“To all women. Now hush, don’t interrupt.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

De Molina gave Peel a mock harsh look for speaking again, after which he put his hand to his mouth and made the motion of turning a lock. “As for the second, I did not say I would not join you. It is the NSA I have no desire to become a part of, or any other organization. I do as I will these days. And so, what I am telling you, my dearest Mr. Harrison Peel, is that what I will do is send you on your way for now. I believe I will miss you when you are gone. And, when you are ready to go after the Coaldale thing, I shall join you.”

Peel stared for a moment, uncertain what he should say. What he wanted to say. Losing Nicola was still raw. Would time heal him? More importantly, at that moment, he wondered if the Pirate Queen might actually know him better than he knew himself? In a flood of emotions, he realized he wanted the woman next to him, in every way possible — lover, companion, guide, co-worker, playmate, comforter, and confessor — or did he, for there were elements to her, such as her powers and convictions that sometimes scared him.

“Not yet,” she whispered.

Peel’s eyes went wide. Was reading minds a part of the powers she had hinted at in the jungle hospital, or was he correct in thinking she knew him better than he knew himself? As his mouth opened slightly, de Molina hugged him, waiting for him to hug her back.

“You are a very comfortable man, my Harrison. Heal yourself. Quickly.” Pushing gently back from him, separating them by only a few centimeters, she tugged on the lapels of his overcoat. “I want to play with you, when you are not so wrapped in sheepskin.” And then, she released her grip on him and took a backward step out of his arms. “And not so bridled by memory.” Kissing her fingers, she pressed them gently against his cheek. “Remember… Coaldale.”

“It’s a date,” he promised, then watched as she strolled away down the boulevard and into the London crowd. Peel wondered at the sexiness of her walk, wondering if it were something she was doing just for him, or something that was a part of her he had simply not allowed himself to notice until that moment. Then, before he could decide, his mobile phone rang. An NSA secure line number.

As he answered it, a voice from across the Atlantic demanded, “Code in please.”

“Peel. Seven, nine, one, eight, nine, Quebec, Lima.”

“Hold, please.”

While he waited, he thought about Coaldale. A part of his mind felt shocked that he now felt he had an additional reason to want to go after the monster. Then he smiled, thinking that seeing de Molina again for any reason was not something that should shock any man.

“Harrison Peel,” asked a voice on the end of the line he had never heard before.

“Yes?”

“We need you to come in straight away, NSA headquarters.” When he didn’t immediately answer, she said, “We need you back. Something’s come up. In Antarctica.”

Peel nodded. Something always comes up, he told himself. Doesn’t it? Reaching up, he rubbed his hand across his scalp, wondering what it would look like with the imprint of kisses made by a certain shade of lipstick he had never seen before that morning decorating it. And wondering why she also scared him.

“I’m on my way,” he said, and cut the connection.

Folding his phone, he slid it into his pocket and then disappeared into the London crowd as had de Molina. Coaldale could wait, he supposed. But only for a while.

A short while.

The Gravity Museum

The allosaurus darted across the icy snowfields of Antarctica, hunting. The extreme cold should have killed it long before it had crossed eight kilometers of desolate ice fields. This led Harrison Peel to believe it wasn’t a dinosaur.

He watched the creature on the monitor inside the US Air Force operations center. The video feed transmitted from a F-22 Raptor circling the living prehistoric discovery.

“What do we do, Major?” asked Major Donna Shelby, of the Australian Army on loan to the US Air Force who, like Peel, was Code-89 cleared. Everyone in the op center possessed sufficient security clearance to understand what they were looking at was not from this Earth. Everyone assigned to Antarctica’s broader USAF Camp Palmer knew aliens were real, and the threat was a clear and present danger. The allosaurus was just one of many hostiles active in the southern white continent.

“Kill it,” Peel said. Despite being the same rank as Shelby and technically a civilian now, Peel was the resident expert on what they were looking at, so held operational seniority.

Adjusted her thick glasses so they sat straight on the bridge of her nose, Shelby repeated the order.

A second later, the F-22 pilot engaged an air-to-surface missile and hit the allosaurus in its center mass. The explosion was sudden and brilliant as a fireball consumed the pseudo-dinosaur. Confirmation came when the creature, in its dance of fiery death, transformed into what it really was. A Shoggoth. Tentacles flailed in the maelstrom, and a hundred mouths, loaded with serrated teeth and barbed tongues, screamed out its last protest.

No one spoke as the F-22 returned for a second pass. Its camera feed caught a clear image. The charred remains of the creature burned with licking flames. The missile had done its job and decimated the Shoggoth.

“Where did it come from?” Peel asked.

Shelby grinned. “Let me show you.”

——

Maya Rodriguez cried over her meal of beans and rice, aware that she should eat to maintain stamina, but without the strength to do so. It was always cold in Antarctica, and food was the fuel that kept you warm. But logic didn’t always trump emotions.

She also sat alone, between work shifts, because she didn’t want anyone to know how badly she hurt, and ask why she wasn’t eating.

Then she noticed a man appear before her, with his own plate of beans and rice. He was tall, slim but muscular, with a shaved head. She guessed his age to be early forties. If he smiled, he might have been handsome.

“Mind if I join you?” he said.

“Yes.”

He sat opposite her anyway.

Maya glanced around the enormous mess. At least fifty empty tables. They were the only occupants frequenting the establishment between regular meal shifts. “I want to be alone.”

“I lost someone too,” he said, not breaking eye contact. “And recently. And to a Shoggoth. Someone I loved deeply.”

Maya looked up and held his stare. Her husband and fellow paleontologist, Arturo Rodriguez, hadn’t made it back from his most recent expedition into the depths of the Elder City, the ancient alien corpse city unearthed in the frozen Antarctic wastelands that dated back over one billion years. Academics like Maya and Arturo would have given up their first-born child for the opportunity to scramble over its preserved records. The fossil finds alone were like nothing else on Earth, and suggested that the original inhabitants of the Elder City, the long vanished Pentapods, or Elder Things, had instigated life that eventually evolved — hundreds of millions of years later — into humans. It was a fascinating study, an unprecedented opportunity for post-doctorates like herself and Arturo to make their careers.

But no one had properly impressed the risks on them both that came with work in Antarctica, or perhaps Arturo and she hadn’t wanted to hear. Now the love of her life was dead. He and his team slaughtered by the shape-shifting Shoggoths that patrolled the icy continent like hunter-seeker robots, nightmarish monsters out to destroy all DNA-based life. Perhaps they should have listened, and then this shaved-headed man wouldn’t be here wanting to talk.

“Doctor Rodriguez, I need your help.”

She laughed, despite the pain she felt.

“We might finally have a means to destroy, or at least severely incapacitate, these Shoggoths. Once and for all.”

“Who are you?”

“Harrison Peel. Former Australian Army. Now with the NSA.”

Her back straightened. She looked at him directly for the first time. “I’ve heard of you. Heard what you’ve done. What you’ve been through.”

Peel looked away, finally breaking eye contact. She witnessed the pain in him that was as raw as the pain in her.

He said, “Then you know how serious I am, when I say, I need your help.”

——

Donna Shelby lay in her bunk with Nathan Chelan’s thick, muscular arms wrapped around her glistening skin. Wild, abandoned sex had their blood pumping and brought warmth that the continent otherwise denied them. Satisfied after their passion-powered coupling, he started drifting off.

Shelby relaxed at the touch of the Native American’s arms around her, his chest pressed up against her naked back, spooning her. It was the only time she felt safe. When they were together, entwined.

“Nathan?”

He mumbled some words and dozed again. The Navy SEAL Sergeant liked to sleep immediately after sex, but she liked to talk. Most times she let him have his way, but not today.

“Nathan?”

“What?”

“Give me a minute, of your time?”

“A minute for what? You want to go again?”

Everyone had their coping rituals. Sex provided Chelan a natural high and allowed him to sleep without nightmares. It seemed meant to deny him a dreamless sleep, but she needed to talk.

“What’s up, Donna?”

“This… Might be the last time.”

“Last time?” Suddenly he was awake. He turned on his back and flipped her so she faced him and could lay her long slender leg across his lap. His arm wrapped around her back, provoking a pleasant, tingling sensation along her spine. Because she was an officer, Shelby’s privileges extended to private quarters. No one would disturb them during their time together. “What do you mean, last time?”

“Peel wants us both back in the field. Enter Shoggoth controlled territory.”

She felt his heart rate increase.

“Us?”

“Yes. He wants me, because I’ve become an expert on Pentapod language, and have a good understanding of what we might find where we’re headed.” She drew circles with her finger along the pectoral muscles of his chest. “He also asked for the best mountaineer in the South Pole. So, I suggested you.”

He lay for a minute, not speaking. His heart rate still fast but his breath had slowed.

“I hope you don’t mind, Nat. Means we’ll be on a mission together, and I’ll outrank you.”

“And Peel outranks you? I don’t get that logic, when he’s no longer with the military?”

“On this mission, he does. He put it all together, and no one knows Shoggoths like he does. He needs to be in charge.”

Nathan snorted. She could feel him drifting off again. “Shoggoths. I wish every fucking last one of them was dead.”

She squeezed him. “You don’t mind, that we’re in this together?”

He laughed. “I guess I don’t. It will be interesting, spending time together while you have your clothes on. And I must salute you and call you ma’am. Think you can handle that?”

“He doesn’t know…”

“Peel? Doesn’t know what?”

“That you and I… Spend time together, like this.”

“Ah…” he said, finally understanding what bothered her.

Shelby respected Peel, and she didn’t want him thinking any less of her because of her off-hours coping mechanisms. “You okay with this?”

Nathan laughed again and shrugged. “If you don’t want him to know, it’s none of his fucking business.”

——

The video played from the lens of an MQ-1 Predator drone, cruising at altitude over the peaks of the Miskatonic Mountains. The ragged snow-capped elevations reached eleven kilometers above sea level, higher and steeper than the Himalayas, and far more ancient. It was a clear day, with blue skies and plenty of sunlight reflecting off the white. Then a plume of black mist squirted from one of a thousand pipes built into the mountains.

“What are those?” asked Sergeant Nathan Chelan, leaning back in his chair and looking overly relaxed.

Yesterday, upon Major Shelby’s recommendation, Peel had read the US Navy SEAL’s profile. From Arizona and of Navajo ancestry, Chelan was a Code-89 veteran of the highest regard, with tours of duty in South Africa, Brazil and Canada. Not against terrorists and insurgents, but in covert wars against other-world monsters like Shoggoths and other alien monstrosities similar to what Peel had fought in his time. Chelan’s most recent mission before Antarctica was taking down — again — a particular anomaly that Peel had first identified over a decade ago in Cambodia. Human’s couldn’t win this war, but they could prolong it. Chelan had taken out several Shoggoths since his transfer to the Great White, so he was exactly the man Peel required.

“Waste vents,” Peel said, from where he stood at one end of the tiny briefing room, just large enough for his requirements. Four individuals with specialist skills were all he needed. The team was probably too small, but if it were any larger, his enemies would learn of its existence and compromise it. “The vents lead us to believe there is an active Pentapod facility deep under these mountains. One we have sought for some time now.”

He looked to Doctor Rodriguez and Major Shelby, pausing should they wish to share their specialist and pertinent knowledge. Rodriguez was an academic specialist in Earth’s deep geological and paleontological history, and had studied many of the Pentapod artifacts in great detail. Shelby and Peel had worked together on the ‘Impossible Object’ project from a decade back. While Peel slipped through a wormhole into the future, his fellow Australian had mastered the Pentapod language, and had a working understanding of the alien’s billion-year history better than anyone he knew. At least, better than anyone he knew who still lived.

Neither woman spoke a word.

“What’s down there, Major?” Chelan asked using Peel’s former military title. He looked relaxed, cocky even. Peel wondered if this would be a problem.

“Shoggoths, Sergeant. Perhaps Pentapods who aren’t as extinct as we’d like to pretend. But more importantly, a weapon, that we can use to turn the tide in this war we’re raging against the Shoggoths.”

“A weapon?” Rodriguez asked with a shudder.

Peel nodded. “Years ago, linguists, archaeologists and code-breakers like Major Shelby here, translated a key passage of the Pentapod writings. It talked of a broadcasting device, that when activated, caused the molecular structure of a Shoggoth to fail.”

“What does that mean? Failed molecular structure?” asked Chelan.

Peel looked to Shelby, who answered. “We think it means that when the weapon is active, its broadcast signal collapses a Shoggoth’s ability to mimic other creatures, like humans—”

Chelan made a pistol shape with his finger and shot Shelby, which he followed up with a wink. “And like the allosaurus the Raptor destroyed last week?”

“Exactly!”

Watching from the corner, Doctor Rodriguez shuddered, then sat straight, clasped her hands together as if in prayer, and wouldn’t look at any of them.

Peel wanted to ask the paleontologist if she had a theory to share, but the moment didn’t seem right for her. Perhaps she needed time to mull over what she had committed to, and to understand that everyone on the team respected her for her decision to join their mission, because she didn’t seem to believe that just yet. Everyone here had lost someone close to them, but Rodriguez’s loss was the most recent. Time had not yet dulled her pain.

“The plan,” said Peel, “is to recover this device. Captain Shelby has studied the records detailing where this weapon is likely kept, knows its general layout and how to find it once we are inside. If we secure one of these weapons, then we’ll hook it up to satellites and beam the signal everywhere. In theory, it should halt any further attempts by Shoggoths to impersonate us, and halt their infiltration of human society anywhere on the planet.”

Now Peel shuddered, even though he’d promised himself he wouldn’t in front of his team, because vivid memories came to him of the most fearsome Shoggoth he had encountered, and fought. General Byrd Coaldale was a human-appearing monster that had penetrated the highest levels of the Pentagon and the US Government, with a long-term agenda to transform humanity into a slave race, and to farm people as food.

Peel still didn’t understand why Shoggoths ate humans. It certainly wasn’t for nourishment. Perhaps it was just because they could.

“If we have known about this weapon for years,” asked Chelan, leading back in his chair and placing his arms behind his head, “why are we only just now going after it?”

“Because while we know the layout, we’ve only just discovered its location.”

Peel played the video again. The Predator circled around a peak, then dropped to an elevation of five thousand meters. A circular scar of melted obsidian rock, perhaps fifty meters in diameter, penetrated the mountain. It angled to near vertical, and it was deep enough for shadows to cover its deep interior.

“We believe this is a scar from a time when the Pentapods warred with another ancient species, as yet unidentified, also mentioned in the Pentapod records. This was a breach into the Pentapod’s defenses. Its dated at about two-hundred-and-twenty million years ago. Radar tells us this weapon penetrated at least ten kilometers of rock.”

Shelby whistled. “That’s five kilometers below sea level.”

Peel nodded. “Yes. We believe the weapon initially penetrated much deeper, but the molten rock down there collapsed the lower sections of the tunnel.”

The Sergeant raised his hand. “I still don’t understand the connection.”

Peel grinned at Chelan’s observation, glad that the only member of the team he hadn’t previously met now displayed his intelligence and suspicion, traits that would keep him alive in the coming days and weeks. Shelby had vouched for him, and that was enough for Peel, even though the man seemed too relaxed considering the risks they were about to face. “This is a scar that leads to where the Pentapod kept these weapons, or so goes the records. A place called the Gravity Museum. We don’t know what ‘gravity’ means in their context, but it is some kind of library, or archive, or museum of Pentapod knowledge. The Allosaurus might have been some kind of record, an imprint from which the Shoggoth built its disguise.”

Shelby adjusted her glasses and pointed to the frozen video image of the alien manufactured devastation. “The Shoggoth crawled out of that scar?”

“Yes.”

“Climbed ten kilometers out the earth? Up a shear, smooth surface of obsidian glass?”

“Yes.”

Chelan crossed his arms. “No disrespect, sir, but that’s a big stretch, linking the Gravity Museum to a random appearance of a dino-Shoggoth.”

“Except,” said Peel, “we know shadowy forces have succeeded, many times, in targeting and destroying all previous records we’ve uncovered on the Gravity Museum. Somebody, or something, doesn’t want us to find this place.”

Peel expected a question or a challenge, but the room was silent. Revelations of the nature, and dangers associated with their mission, were now switching on in their minds. The mission might well kill them all… or leave them trapped for eternity inside worse fates.

“You get it now. There could be Shoggoths anywhere, even here in Camp Palmer, disguised as humans. Any of you could be a Shoggoth, that’s how pervasive they are. The blood tests you were all subjected to just before we had this meeting, and me also, prove we are all human. For now. It’s why only the four of us are going in. No one else. No one, or nothing, to compromise us.” He looked at each of them and held their stares. “You still want to join me, on this suicide mission?”

One by one, they nodded.

Rodriguez had lost her husband to these creatures. Too many of Chelan’s brothers in arms had fallen under the onslaught of dimensional horrors from beyond. Shelby wouldn’t talk about what she had lost, but Peel had always seen that her pain cut her deep, told in the blankness that often glazed her eyes and in her permanent frown lines. The same blankness and lines that often stared back at him from a mirror.

“We’re taking in specialized weapons. 12-gauge pump action shotguns with a variant of a dragon’s breath round. Essentially phosphorous shells that turn the weapon into a flamethrower that we know burns and kills Shoggoths. Also, 40mm incendiary grenades fired from M4A1 carbines fitted with M203 launchers. We will carry Barretta M9 pistols, and like the M4s, we’ll load these weapons with armor-piercing rounds, because we don’t know what else we’ll encounter down there. Body armor, collapsible skis, mountaineering equipment, oxygen bottles and cold weather kits. Also, light intensifier and thermal imagining goggles, although we aren’t sure how much light or heat there will be down in the subterranean world.”

Rodriguez hesitated, then raised her hand. She was finally ready to speak what was on her mind.

“Doctor?”

“Sir,” she hesitated, then lost her voice.

“We’re all risking our lives here, Doctor Rodriguez. Nothing you say will be irrelevant. Better to speak your concerns now than regret it later.”

Maya Rodriguez cleared her throat, then glanced at Major Donna Shelby. “No disrespect to the linguist and Pentapod specialist here, but have you considered we are translating an alien language? That can’t be simple, and is loaded with assumptions.”

Donna Shelby stiffened. “Doctor, what do you mean?”

“That Shoggoth, Major, impersonating a dinosaur. Why was it doing that, when there haven’t been dinosaurs on this planet for sixty-six million years?”

The team looked at her, but none of them said a word.

“What if the translation is wrong? What if it’s not the Gravity Museum, or Gravity Archive or Library?”

Chelan cleared this throat and sat forward. “You’re not asking, Doctor, because you know the answer to your question. So, spit out the answer.”

The paleontologist cleared her throat again. “What if its proper translation is the Gravity Zoo, and some exhibits have escaped?”

——

Lieutenant Dirk Kinsella stood at the base of the Miskatonic Mountains and shivered. He could never get used to the cold, despite his many years training fanatics in the Hindu Kush, instructing them on every covert technique he knew in another desolate, icy landscape. He supposed the impossibly tall range, which more resembled a natural wall seven miles high than the craggy peak it was, provided some shelter from the wind. He noticed several steep slopes of snow that ranged from the top to the base of the mountains, pristine enough to ski down but at breakneck speed.

Kinsella sighed. He and his insertion team would fly to the mountains soon, and follow Harrison Peel and his volunteers inside, discover what Peel was so desperate to find there, and then kill them.

He watched the six fanatics chant together, invoking the names of their beloved gods to prepare for this mission. Cthulhu. Hastur. Yig, Y’Golanc. Chaugner Faugn. Cthugha. Shudde M’ell. Dagon… The names went on and on. Great Old Ones all, who the fanatics believed — when the stars were right — would reveal themselves upon this Earth and rightfully rule the planet. Millions of non-believers would die at their hands, claws or tentacles from their lack of piety.

Acid burns on their faces in the shape of a hand displayed their chosen assassin status, touched by the Masked Messenger during one of her rare appearances at their ceremonies. Her followers dressed in black military garb, wore body armor and slung Heckler & Koch submachine guns and Glock semi-automatic pistols. Concealed within their clothing were long bladed knives forged from obsidian and jade-colored rock, their preferred means of killing. These fanatics were the elite of the Black Brotherhood, an already feared cult as ancient as human civilization, solely focused on returning this world to monsters. Little of their humanity still existed inside them.

Kinsella, however, didn’t believe as they did. Sure, he believed alien intelligences existed, and he feared them because of their undefinable powers and uncaring cruelty towards humans, but that was all they were, aliens. Not deities to worship and swoon over.

Kinsella felt it prudent to keep these thoughts to himself, because the Black Brotherhood had zero tolerance for those that didn’t share their own backwards and insane religious viewpoints. Kinsella only trained the Black Brotherhood soldiers and assassins because General Byrd Coaldale had ordered him to, and for reasons Kinsella couldn’t understand, the fanatics feared the General more than they feared the Masked Messenger, so they paid attention to his every lesson.

Kinsella supposed Antarctica was an improvement over the dirty caves of Afghanistan where he had spent many years of his life. A hideout for the Black Brotherhood taken from the Taliban by force and used to rebuild their cult from the ground up, so to speak, transforming them into a modern and competent fighting force, today a rival to any special forces outfit anywhere on the planet.

Now that the fanatics’ chanting was at an end, the leader approached Kinsella.

Arla would have been pretty if the handprint scar across her face hadn’t ruined her looks. Kidnapped from her family at a young age, she’d become a child bride of a Taliban regional commander. The Black Brotherhood had later ‘rescued’ her from a horrible fate when she was eighteen, only to expose her to the horrors of a nihilistic universe dominated by brutal alien abominations. Perhaps because of her lifelong trauma, Arla had not wondered at their reality as Kinsella did, and embraced the alien gods into her heart and her mind. She trained hard, studied longer and perfected her technique like no one else. That was why she was the leader. That was why Coaldale gave orders to Kinsella, then he passed those orders onto Arla, which she subsequently passed on to the five male assassins under her command.

“We are ready, Kinsella, to kill for our master.” She gave a slight bow. “Cthulhu fhtagn!”

“Cthulhu fhtagn!” Kinsella responded through gritted teeth, not liking the religious ceremonies or adulations they made him partake in. “You know the mission requires us to first follow Peel and his team? Dispose of them only after they have recovered the alien weapon Peel seeks?”

Arla bowed. “Of course, Kinsella. You trained us to follow orders. Following orders is what we’ll do.”

But not his orders, Kinsella thought. They did as Kinsella demand only after Coaldale had first given his approval, which for this mission, he had.

“So, we are not ready to kill, Arla, until Coaldale gives the word. You understand me?”

She sneered. “Of course.”

A Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter appeared in the cloudless blue, its twin propeller blades ripping through the subzero air, and flew in low across the horizon. Kinsella and the six Black Brotherhood fanatics waited patiently for it to land. Markings were US Air Force, but down here in Antarctic, concealing their identity was pointless because no one existed here to report on their actions.

At least, no one human.

They climbed on board and settled in as the Chinook flew them parallel to the mountain’s steep edge. Then Kinsella spotted Coaldale, kitted up in the same arctic fighting gear as the rest of them. Next to him sat a tall, muscular woman whose eyes were as cold as Coaldale’s stares. She too dressed for arctic warfare.

“Sir,” Kinsella said with a nod as Coaldale approached. “You’re joining us?”

“Yes, Lieutenant. This mission is too important not to. This is Sergeant Khoose.”

Kinsella frowned. “Khoose? Interesting name there, Sergeant.”

She said nothing. Her eyes stared through him.

Kinsella felt his skin crawl, and he swallowed. He wondered what Peel was so keen to recover from this alien tomb, that provoked Coaldale to join the mission, and bring this strange woman as his bodyguard, for that undoubtedly was her role.

“You have a problem with any of this, Lieutenant?”

Kinsella didn’t like this recent development, but nothing about this mission sat well with him. Nothing since his transfer from the Navy SEALs into Coaldale’s CIA Special Activities Division group had sat well with him. America was supposedly leading the great covert war against the alien terrors that permeated so much of their world, but Coaldale only ever seemed to make deals with them. He’d always claimed it was for the greater good, that he used these fanatical cults to implement the US Government’s own agendas, and when these groups served their purpose, disposed of them. But Kinsella had only seen the Black Brotherhood grow strong, reignite their old traditions and operate with a barbarity that would have made any seasoned Taliban fighter cower in the shadows. This was not a cult America could afford to allow to degenerate into the next Islamic State, Skin Brotherhood or Tiger Transit, because it would become something far worse.

“No, sir.”

“Then what is troubling you, Lieutenant?”

Kinsella’s eyes drifted to the fanatics, all in deep mediation. “A SEAL team is better equipped for this mission.”

“No, they aren’t, Kinsella.”

“Yes, sir.”

Every muscle tensed in Coaldale’s weathered face. “Down there, in the Gravity Museum, there will be horrors that not even you or I have encountered or understand. The Elder City, it is dead, and it ceased functioning long ago. The Gravity Museum is different, because it is alive, and the complex’s very own systems will defend itself from intruders. I don’t want a team of SEAL operators losing their minds because they can’t accept what they encounter down there. That’s why I showed you the horrors I did in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to season you for this very mission. But not everyone is of the same mental stamina as you, Lieutenant Kinsella.”

“Yes, sir,” Kinsella said again, not believing for a moment that he was up to what Coaldale asked of him. Every night when not on a mission he drank shot after shot of whisky to sleep and to keep away the nightmares. In moments of downtime, he would stare at a blank wall for hours, because it was the only means to still his mind. This mission, he knew, would be the end of him.

“Should I be worried, Lieutenant?”

“No, sir. I will serve you with honor, sir.”

——

At an elevation of five kilometers, the air was both too thin to breathe without effort and too icy not to chill their lungs. Peel’s team worked with oxygen masks and dressed in insulated parkas, prepping the ropes for their descent down the inside of the obsidian tunnel. This, Peel mused, was the simple part.

During a breather, Peel looked out across the great white desert of Antarctica, and the stretch of the awe-inspiring Miskatonic Mountains ranges, running north-south from the Antarctic Ocean to the South Pole. An officer at Camp Palmer had once told Peel they named the range after an obscure university in Boston, Massachusetts, that had once been a reputable institute of learning between the World Wars, but had now faded into obscurity. A Miskatonic University scientific expedition sent to Antarctica in the 1930s became the first group to discover the range, the Elder City, the Pentapods, and ultimately the Shoggoths. Not everyone on that expedition returned to tell their tale.

Or so the stories went.

What Peel knew was that many more good people had died here since.

The Elder City’s position was six hundred kilometers north along the range from their current position. While the Elder City had been explored — although not anywhere near comprehensively — this moment, Peel mused, was the first time humans had entered the Gravity Museum. They were explorers about to enter a lost world.

His thoughts turned to Joan de Molina, the enigmatic woman he had recently worked with in Nigeria, and how she had promised to help him take down Coaldale. She had skills the likes of which he had never encountered before, and in this moment, he wished she were here, helping him. But when he’d sent out word to contact her, de Molina had vanished. Like she never existed.

He’d also asked after Jack Dixon, to see if his old friend would help him, but Dixon was on another operation in the United States. Something related to the New Horizons mission passing by Pluto.

“Ropes are ready, sir,” Sergeant Chelan reported. The man was young, full of energy, and he kept looking at Shelby like he wanted to ask her on a date. “I should go first, sir.”

Peel nodded. “Very good, Sergeant.” As the most proficient mountaineer in their quartet, the decision for Chelan to lead made logical sense, but it should have been Peel going first. Peel no longer desired to ask anyone to do anything he himself would not do. The best leaders always led by example, and that was all he had left in him now, leadership.

Chelan pointed to Shelby and Rodriguez, assembling the solar collection dish and radio antenna on the two-meter-wide lip of rock where the USAF helicopter had lowered them, via drop ropes — their last human contact before their decent into the underworld.

“The climb will be difficult, because obsidian is essentially glass, and it will cut. Thankfully, we are going down, abseiling. Most climbing ropes are sixty to eighty meters, but these custom-made beauties are high strength ropes of two-hundred-and fifty-meter lengths. We have enough length to descend the eleven thousand meters, but it means setting up anchor points every two hundred meters, or so.”

Peel did a quick calculation in his head. “That’s about fifty stops on the way down.”

“Yes, sir, it’s going to take time. We must leave every rope in place, because I don’t believe it will be possible to climb back out without ropes. Not on obsidian. As agreed, sir, you will climb one length behind us at all times and lower the rope packs down when Shelby, Rodriguez and I secure the next switch over point. That will exhaust you.” He said it like he knew Peel was too old for the job required of him.

Peel nodded, ignoring the challenge, yet was aware the two packs weighed in at one hundred kilograms each. He would need pulleys to lower them at first, but they would lighten as they descended. “Anything else I should know before we start, Sergeant?” Peel glanced at Donna Shelby cleaning the frost off her glasses, but if Chelan guessed Peel’s insinuation, he said nothing.

“Sir, we’ll set up inventory points every kilometer, with food, water, batteries, suspended tents, and so forth if we can’t find ledges, available for us to use again on the way up. We’ll also run a power and communications cable down with us, so we can recharge batteries and report back to HQ when we are ready.”

“How long will it take? The climb, I mean?”

“Two, maybe three days. Depends on whether its obsidian all the way down, or if there is any natural rock.”

“Well, we don’t know how far down the entrances to the Gravity Museum are. We might not have to climb all the way. Or we might find there is no path in.”

“‘Hope for the best, but plan for the worst,’ sir?” Chelan said, quoting the famous military saying.

“Exactly!” Peel wasn’t so concerned about the descent, but the ascent worried him, because they might need to escape in a hurry, and a ten-kilometer vertical hole to scramble out of would not be a fast exit. If this was the only route out, it would be time-consuming and anything might chase them, like another Shoggoth disguised as another dinosaur. Perhaps this one would take on the form of a pterosaur and fly up to eat them.

Doctor Rodriguez and Major Shelby soon joined them and said they were ready. Shelby smiled at Chelan and suddenly Peel knew it wasn’t a case of mutual attraction, intimacy was already a shared commonality between them. He would keep this observation to himself and see how the next few days played out. They were all professionals here. So what if two of his team found comfort in a physical relationship with each other?

As a team, they took one last look out across the vast Antarctic wasteland, and the permanent sun hanging on the horizon. Then, one by one, they climbed down the scar left by an ancient alien weapon, and vanished from the surface world.

——

Despite her training in and experience gained mountaineering within the Elder City, which was a necessary skill to explore its many secrets, Maya Rodriguez had never endured physical activity as terrifying or strenuous as their descent into the Miskatonic Mountains. She didn’t believe she would survive the journey. It would end suddenly and unexpectedly with her slipping and falling to her death.

The shaft was almost vertical, and the drop was the same distance from the top to the bottom that aircraft flew above the earth. A fall from even a few meters could be fatal with the random jagged edges of obsidian glass lining the walls. But if she missed all those edges, a few kilometers to fall just gave her time to ponder her fate before she hit the bottom.

Despite the sunlight steaming down the scar and the perpetual day, the angles and the black surfaces left them climbing in near darkness. She supposed that meant she couldn’t see to the bottom, which was a good thing.

Some people called this range the Mountains of Madness, and she now understood why.

The young Sergeant Chelan was always first, finding a path downwards and constantly searching for fissures in the obsidian to secure his pitons, and the tiniest of ledges to establish rest points.

Major Shelby descended next, carrying equipment for the next leg of the climb.

Then came Maya Rodriguez, with no expectation on her except to abseil and carry her own equipment.

Last was their enigmatic leader, Harrison Peel, who lowered the two heavy equipment packs, one after the other, and always remained one rope length above them. His task she imaged was the most challenging, lugging eleven kilometers of climbing rope, pitons, and the power and communication cable. Rodriguez also empathized because Peel was older than her by ten years, and she wondered how he coped with the physical stress of the climb. But he never complained or was short with them, or questioned if their mission was pointless. None of them did.

On the next ledge where she could rest for a moment, Rodriguez examined her hands. Two days of climbing left her body cut, bruised and sore all over.

Then she noticed Chelan had a gash on his cheek where he’d slipped and smashed against the black glass. The wound had healed over, but the scar was long, angry and red.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Hardly notice it.”

Rodriguez saw that the climb had tired him — no, exhausted him — like her. They had slept in suspended tents a few kilometers up the ‘night’ before, but the mental image of suspension kilometers above nothing didn’t make for a peaceful night.

At least the temperature was more agreeable this deep into the earth, about ten degrees Celsius now. Warm air currents rising from the depths allowed them to slip off their heavier, insulated layers. Fewer clothes made climbing easier.

They had climbed for twenty hours now. The fear of falling, while always constant, had finally become bearable, because she discovered it was impossible to feel scared all the time.

Rodriguez looked up and could still see the distant light of the entrance. It was difficult to image that some superweapon had forged this gash through the planet, but it had. She also saw Peel, two hundred meters above them, secured by rope as he lowered their last pack, lighter now than when they had started because of all the ropes laid out along their route to the top.

“How you holding up?” Donna Shelby asked, sharing a smile with Rodriguez. The Australian military officer was late thirties, but was much fitter and her body more toned than Rodriguez.

“Glad I came along, actually.”

“Yeah,” Shelby asked with a grin. “Why is that?”

“Getting back into the field… It helps take your mind off what you have lost. Gives you purpose again.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“I’m wondering what we’ll find down there?”

“Hopefully secrets that will help.”

The women heard a commotion above and looked up. A falling shape hit Peel, and he swung wildly, and turned in the air. The shape dropped past Peel, flayed and twisted as it dropped.

And then Peel lost his grip on the last pack with the rest of their ropes, and it fell with the shape.

“Heads up!” Shelby cried.

The three climbers pressed their bodies against the obsidian rock. Two shapes dropped past. The first was the bag with the last of their supplies. The second was a battered and broken person, dressed in black, and like them, slung an assault weapon about their body.

Both shapes bounced off each other, and the wall, and soon vanished into the dark pit beneath them. But they heard them for much longer, bouncing off the walls all the way down.

Shelby was immediately on the radio. “Major, are you okay?” With her connected headpiece, Rodriguez heard it all.

“Yes,” Peel spoke with effort, sounding winded. “What the hell was that?”

“A body. A soldier, sir.”

“Someone’s following us?” Rodriguez asked, discovering a whole new type of fear she hadn’t understood to be possible until this moment. She noticed her breathing was suddenly both faster and shallower.

“Looks like it,” said Shelby.

“We knew this might happen,” Peel spoke through the radio. “Give me a second.” The team waited at least a minute, as Peel presumably scanned the higher reaches with light intensifier binoculars. Eventually he chirped back over the radio. “I’m uncertain, but I’ve identified at least five individuals, about two kilometers up, climbing down after us. One of them must have fallen.”

“What do we do?” asked Rodriguez, her voice louder than before. “We’re out of rope?”

Chelan and Shelby, hanging off the side of the sheer-drop and resting, looked at each other, then back to Rodriguez.

It was Shelby who answered. “We have no choice. We must find another route out of here.”

——

Chelan reported they had only three lengths of two-hundred-and-fifty-meter rope remaining. That gave them six, perhaps seven hundred meters if they stretched out the lengths, before their options ran out. If they didn’t find a path out of the tunnel in that distance, they would have to secure a defensive position against the black glass, and engage with the enemy when they came within effective firing range. Seven hundred meters wasn’t even close to reaching the bottom — at least four kilometers below their current position.

Peel quickly joined his companions and hung off the wall as they strategized their next moves. ‘Rest positions’, they called it, hanging from ropes pinned to the glass cliff face.

“How do we know they are hostile?” Rodriguez asked.

Peel saw fear in her pale complexion and wide eyes. The only member of their team without military training, the paleontologist didn’t have the tactical expertise to know their situation was not favorable.

“If they are friendly,” Chelan said, glancing up, “they would have contacted us by now.”

“Sir, who are they?” Shelby asked.

Peel could guess and suspected Byrd Coaldale. But the circumstances didn’t seem right. “They have to be human. If it were Shoggoths hunting us, they wouldn’t need ropes, and they would descend much faster.”

“Who then, sir?” Chelan asked. “Russians? Chinese?”

“Could be…”

Then a thought occurred. Perhaps it was Coaldale hunting Peel and his team with a human paramilitary force by his side, rather than a group of his own kind. Peel reflected that if this Pentapod weapon they all sought could disrupt a Shoggoth’s disguise, then did the Shoggoths disagree on how to use it should they get their tentacles on one such weapon? Perhaps this amoral species wasn’t as cohesive a group as Peel had first assumed, and would fight for possession of such a powerful device. But that was too much speculation and didn’t help their current predicament.

“I’m guessing it’s Byrd Coaldale, the Shoggoth and Pentagon official I told you all about. But he has a human crew working for him, which is slowing his descent.”

Captain Shelby drank from her water bottle, then whipped mist off her glasses. “But with the ropes we left behind, it won’t take them long for them to catch us, even if they are human.”

“Do we fight?” Rodriguez asked.

The three military personnel all turned to the paleontologist and gave smiles that were pity rather than encouragement.

Chelan said, “Our position is a deathtrap. All it would take is one grenade, timed to detonate as it dropped past us. There is no cover, and if the concussion wave and shrapnel didn’t kill us, the inevitable fall to the bottom would. The battle would be over before we could even engage.”

Rodriguez shuddered. “So, our only option is to get out of this shaft, and quickly.”

They all looked at her. Peel knew the others had already reached this conclusion the moment the body had fallen past them.

“Don’t all look so glum. There might be a way,” Rodriguez said. “Let me show you.”

They descended a dozen meters before the paleontologist found what she searched for. “These.” She pointed to three perfect circular holes in the obsidian, approximately five centimeters in diameter and arranged in a triangular formation. One dribbled black globs of matter, the second green globs, and the third nothing. “We’ve recently discovered these in the Elder City. They are part of a network that runs through every Pentapod structure. In the Elder City, these tubes are devoid of any fluids, but here they seem active.”

“The source of the black waste plumes from the tops of the Miskatonic Range?” Peel asked.

Rodriguez nodded. Her smile suggested excitement, despite the current dangers they faced. “Exactly. Black for waste. The green globs are some kind of food or power for the complex, or at least that is my guess.”

“How do they help?” asked Shelby.

“The network is analogous to blood veins in the human body. They branch out, getting smaller and smaller, but more numerous the further they are from the ‘heart’. But the bigger tunnels in the Elder City network, they are at least a meter wide.”

“Wide enough to crawl through,” said Chelan.

Peel nodded. “And therefore, will take us, literally, to the heart of the Gravity Museum.”

Doctor Rodriguez grinned.

Before she could say more, Shelby reached out and touched the black goop. All her companions moved to stop her, because they didn’t understand the toxicity of the substance. But when her hand came away, she had come to no harm. “What?” Shelby said, surprised by their concerned stares. “I put my hand on this stuff earlier, by accident, both the green and black goo. It’s harmless.”

“You didn’t think to mention it, ma’am?” Chelan said through gritted teeth.

“No, Sergeant. I’ve seen enough alien shit in my life to know what’s worth mentioning, and what isn’t. But if you must know, I thought it was algae, native to our fucked-up planet and was terrestrial life.” She picked at the black goo. “What’s interesting now that I’ve had time to examine it, is its surface tension.”

Again, all eyes looked at her in wonder.

“Oh, come on. What I mean is, touching it doesn’t break the surface tension. The goo literally pushes foreign objects out of the way, rather than absorb it.”

Peel nodded. “Thank you, Major, for your insights. At least we know we won’t die of toxic poisoning if we get covered in the stuff. But back to pressing matters, we have a plan now, climb until we find a vein wide enough to crawl down, and follow that until it delivers us to where we need to go.”

“What about the goo?” Chelan asked. “Won’t it get in the way?”

“That’s easy,” said Rodriguez. “The third vein in the cluster carries air.” She held her hand over the five-centimeter-wide opening, feeling the breeze on her palm. “It’s fresh too. It leads to air pumping stations, or at least that is what we think they are. From there, we’ll access orifices that allow us to climb out of the vein network.”

“Orifices?” Chelan looked like he was about to be sick.

“I didn’t say any of this would be pleasant.”

“We need to move,” said Peel, glancing up. “Our pursuers have gained another few hundred meters while we’ve talked. They’ll be upon us before we know it.”

Chelan answered for them all. “At least we have a plan now, sir, that might actually work.”

——

They climbed another sixty meters down the obsidian cylinder before they found the vein that suited their purposes. What surprised Peel were the many veins of various sizes, most firing globs of black and green alien biomass that bounced off the opposite obsidian walls, then rolled or dropped into the darkness. The globs ejected from the holes at considerable speed, and it took some effort to negotiate a path down and around them without the goo hitting them.

“Well, we now know what awaits us at the bottom,” said Chelan with a grin. “A sea of alien shit. I wonder if it would cushion our fall if we fell into it?”

“I don’t want to find out,” Peel said. “Look, that’s what we want.” He led them to an air vein, three quarters of a meter wide. Dark and silent. “We climb down that.”

Doctor Rodriguez shuddered. “Now that I see it, suddenly I feel claustrophobic.”

“Better than waiting for them,” Chelan gestured to their pursuers somewhere up in the darkness above.

“I’ll go first,” said Peel, “Then you, Doctor, then Major Shelby and the Sergeant will bring up the rear. As you said, they’ll get wider the deeper we go, so it will get easier as we progress.” He pointed upwards. “Our enemy is less than a kilometer from us now. Our only other option is to fight, and we won’t survive that. Not here, anyway.”

No one offered an alternative solution, so they entered the air shaft.

——

The rappelling had been hell, but made easy because Peel and his loyal followers had left their ropes for Kinsella and the Brotherhood to follow. If they hadn’t, Kinsella doubted the fanatics could have made the climb. Coaldale and his bodyguard Khoose, in comparison, scrambled down the black glass with ease, like the ropes were a hinderance rather than a help. Kinsella still grimaced that one of the Brotherhood assassins had slipped and fallen, giving away their position. That meant Peel would expect them and prepare for engagement.

Eventually the ropes ran out, and their group found themselves in a collection of broken Pentapod pipes, some spewing black and green goo.

“They escaped this way,” Coaldale said, hanging off the rope, as he pointed to a tube three quarters of a meter in diameter blowing out air.

“How do you know?” Kinsella asked.

“I can hear them.”

The former SEAL listened, but heard nothing. He suspected Coaldale knew only because of reasons he wasn’t sharing, but Kinsella wouldn’t bother asking the General to explain his logic. “Very well, sir. Arla,” he spoke to the lead Black Brotherhood fanatic. “Send your assassins in—”

“No!” Coaldale snapped.

Kinsella looked to his manic superior. “Sir?”

The Pentagon official’s hand gestured to the bizarre woman, who hung like a spider from the black, jagged glass. “We send in Khoose. She will do… things, they won’t expect.”

Then, like the arachnid she resembled, Khoose slinked into the tube and vanished.

——

Crawling proved more complex than Peel had expected. Keeping their torches off so not to alert their pursuers to their position, the darkness remained pervasive even with light intensifier goggles, and the vein surfaces were smoother than Peel had expected, almost frictionless. Climbing through the network when it was horizontal was no problem, but going up required pushing his hands and feet out laterally to gain purchase, resulting in a slow climb upwards, and the use of the last of their ropes to pull the Doctor up behind him because she didn’t have the skills to climb herself. Downwards was a simple process of sliding, which proved no problem until Peel tried to slow, which he could only do on the more level sections of the alien arteries.

There was also the wind, which blew fast and constantly in their faces, more of a discomfort than an obstacle. Peel later noticed that as the veins widened, the air pressure grew. It would be the same with the black and green goo.

What worried Peel the most was that they had lost their way. Each time the veins branched, the natural flow led them towards the wider tunnel, but there was no easy means to mark the route back because the surface of the veins proved impenetrable to scratches and any markers quickly faded. Sometimes they slid through junctures without time to assess them, mark them or make maps. It was almost as if the veins were living organisms that self-repaired. Like a cut healing on human skin.

Eventually the tunnel grew to about a meter and a half in height. Peel could stand, but in a crouched position. With space, the team bunched up.

“How is everyone holding up?” Peel asked.

They all expressed that they were fine.

“Actually, it’s easier than climbing, sir,” Shelby said. She looked exhausted, and so did Doctor Rodriguez. Chelan in contrast seemed fitter and healthier than he’d ever appeared, but he was also the youngest of the group and had undergone rigorous special forces training regimes the rest of them had not. He’d also lost his cocky grin, so perhaps this was a strain on him too.

They continued on, soon reaching the end of the line. A black membrane that resembled an oily surface pumped in and out at incredible speeds, pushing wind towards them.

Shelby shuddered and spoke in a loud voice over the roaring winds. “Sir, that’s got to be a Shoggoth behind that membrane.”

“What?” Rodriguez and Peel asked in unison, holding themselves upright against the moving air pressure, trying to blow them back down the tunnel.

“Pentapod power stations, are in effect, Shoggoths contained inside pumping machines. The Pentapods wrote about it, and we’ve found similar contraptions in the Elder City and in their outposts discovered during the INFINITE EYE project. Some power plants with Shoggoths have remained functional, while others are broken and empty. On the other side of that membrane, the Elder Things imprison a gigantic monster. Probably been here hundreds of millions of years, pounding its tentacular fits against the pistons looking for a way out, but in the process creating power and pumping air, fluids and goo.”

Peel felt a coldness surge along his spine. “Is it safe?”

“Yes, sir, it should be. They only become problems when the machinery fails. Then they escape. Or if someone tampers with them.”

“Or something,” said Rodriguez with a shudder.

Shelby felt around on the tunnel wall, eventually discovering a softer texture on the pipe. “This is our way out. It’s a solid-only membrane. Which means, only solid materials can slip through it.”

Chelan said, “An orifice?”

“Exactly. It’s how we get out.”

“How?” asked Peel.

“You kind of push your way through. Like you are passing through an intestinal tract.”

Peel felt sick at the thought.

“I’ll go first, if you like, sir.”

“No, Major, I’ll go.” Without further consideration, Peel pushed himself through the soft wall that slurped around him, creating an airtight seal that felt like flesh wrapping itself around him, until he slid out the other side. The sensation wasn’t anything he could describe as pleasant.

However, the vast chamber he exited into soon occupied his thoughts, shadowy except for a dull green hue that emanated from everywhere but from no actual sources of light. Massive, singled stones created the towering, carved, monolithic walls. The dank air felt humid, yet was scentless.

The machine he had stepped out of resembled a giant sail constructed, or had perhaps ‘grown’, from metallic sources, with multiple pipes leading up and out and disappearing into dozens of junctures in the walls and ceiling. It reminded him of a mechanical heart.

Two great circular vats bubbled and burped at one end of the vast chamber, one sloshing with the green nutrient goo, and the other of the black, odorous waste product. Two pipes fed the goo into the Shoggoth power plant for further pumping throughout the complex as power or as waste fired to the surface of the Miskatonic Range. Peel pondered if the mountains were a product of a billion years of waste built up over time, and why they had not eroded from normal geological processes like the world’s other great mountain ranges.

Taking a deep breath to center himself, Peel looked up at the imposing machine. Many circular windows of various sizes decorated the surface, and he could see inside. The amorphous, shifting texture of black Shoggoth’s skin undulated like it could never get comfortable, and dozens of green, luminous eyes watched him from its prison, obsessed with the new arrival.

It knew Peel was here.

The Major kept his M4A1 carbine armed and ready, with his finger hovering over the trigger of the M203 40mm incendiary grenade launcher and his eyes watching down the iron sights, but nothing directly threatened him, so he held his position.

Soon his three companions emerged behind him, slipping and slurping from the peculiar orifice. Rodriguez and Shelby stretched and rubbed their tired muscles. Chelan, like Peel, had his weapon ready, should they encounter enemy hostiles.

The women shuddered as their eyes took in the enormity of the Shoggoth power plant. “That monster has to be at least the size of a house,” Rodriguez exclaimed.

“It’s trapped, though,” said Peel. “I’d be dead by now if it wasn’t.” He looked to the vein they had emerged from. “I’m not sure that’s our escape route now. Unless any of you were able to memorize the path back?”

No one had. Like Peel, they’d moved too fast through the downward portions of the vein network to mark their passage back.

Peel asked, “Can we block the orifice, for we have to presume whoever is following us will come this way?”

“Sir, I can rig explosive tripwires?” said Chelan, stoic and serious now. Perhaps the chilling wonders of this ancient necropolis had finally tempered his cocky attitude.

“Do that. Then we go find this Pentapod weapon.”

“What is that?” Doctor Rodriguez asked, pointing to a pentagon shaped tank approximately three meters wide and one meter high, further away from them than the other two tanks. Another pipe led from it to the Shoggoth power plant. She’d stepped closer and peered in. Whatever she saw inside left her looking queasy.

Peel approached and looked with her. About three meters down, a film of red and orange goo glowed and crackled, and lit up with random nodules of red and purple illumination resembling blood vessels, which covered the base of the tank. Unlike the green and black goo, this one seemed alive, amorphous like a Shoggoth, but something different. No tentacles. No teeth. No eyes.

Peel threw in the empty package from an MRE he’d consumed on the obsidian wall. The others joined him, watched in fascination as the red-orange goo bubbled around it, as the packaging broke down into constituent black dust particles before the goo absorbed it and it vanished, like it never existed.

About ten seconds later, the Shoggoth power plant sprang into action, and launched a black glob of waste out through one of its tunnels, presumably firing it towards the peaks of the Miskatonic Mountains.

Shelby swallowed. “I think we’ve just witnessed a Pentapod waste treatment plant in action.”

“Then don’t fall into it,” Peel answered. “Come on, let’s move out.”

——

Donna Shelby recognized pieces of a puzzle she had studied for such a long time now. For years, specialists in Camp Palmer — which included her on the team — had constructed a sketch map of the Gravity Museum, gleaned from information uncovered in Pentapod writings and murals. The principal component of the facility was a vast spiral hall. Shelby felt they were close, and if they could find that hall, she could then orientate them to the cache of Pentapod weapons.

“We’re looking for a vast spiral hall, shaped like a nautilus shell, which grows increasingly wider with each turn. There are many side rooms, one of which contains the Pentapod weapons.”

Rodriguez asked, “What does the long hall contain?”

Shelby said, “Well, the Gravity Museum, whatever that is. Records are vague on its actual nature.”

They followed a high ceiling chamber that led them away from the encased Shoggoth and into a passage lit by the same dull green glow that left more shadows than identifiable surfaces. The silence remained pervasive, and while the air stayed humid, the lack of smell troubled Donna. She noticed there was no dust or debris, anywhere. The Elder City was a ruin, but this place was like being a cell inside the veins of a living organism.

The temperature was about twenty degrees Celsius, unheard of in Antarctica. Perhaps this was the Pentapod’s preferred environment, which made sense if they were indeed the instigators of terrestrial biological life. As for their position, Shelby estimated they were at least three kilometers below sea level, and directly beneath the highest peaks of the Miskatonic Range. She had never felt more isolated.

After half a kilometer of cautious marching, they exited the ‘maintenance’ areas and found themselves exactly where she hoped to be. Vast lengths of halls, with ceilings reaching ten meters above them and lit in a brighter hue of white illumination, with white walls filled with thousands upon thousands of pure glass cubes and rectangles of varying sizes from a few centimeters to dozens of meters across, greeted them.

Everyone lost their fear and grew curious, stepped closer to understand what they had stumbled upon. The content of each glass cell housed a species of trilobite, and there were thousands of them. They also discovered sea scorpions up to two meters long, jellyfish of every variety Shelby could imagine, roundworms, flatworms, hand-sized tardigrades, ammonites and belemnites, mollusks and earthworms.

“These are the earliest forms of animal life,” Doctor Rodriguez exclaimed, her jaw hanging open and her eyes wide. She was excited now rather than afraid, and Shelby was glad for her. “From the Cambrian Period, five hundred and forty to five hundred million years ago. I can’t believe this, but we are looking at a comprehensive specimen collection from the period. It has to be!”

Shelby stopped to examine one trilobite up close. Although it appeared suspended in the glass, she didn’t sense the solid material preserved the biological specimen, rather imagined it was a capsule of suspended time that created its prison.

She pressed the glass.

Suddenly the trilobite swam through its space, wiggled and moved, but got nowhere.

Shelby stepped back, her stomach churning, and the trilobite froze again.

“Did you see that?” She exclaimed.

Doctor Rodriguez rushed to her side. “See what?”

Shelby pressed the glass again, and once more the trilobite swam in its protected shell of flawless glass, but getting nowhere therefore unable to reach the edges of its prison. Now Major Peel joined them, and could only stare wide eyed with what appeared to be fear and apprehension.

“This is the Gravity Museum,” Shelby said. “Each species of terrestrial life that ever appeared on Earth, is represented here, held in stasis and suspended in the glass cell.”

Rodriguez touched the glass, bringing the trilobite to life a third time, and recorded the event on her digital camera. “My god, we’ll know everything about every species that ever lived.” Tears erupted from her eyes. “I was just thinking, how Arturo would react, if he saw all this. This is everything he could ever want to know.” She moved away so no one would see her sob.

Peel and Shelby exchanged glances.

“Let her be,” said Shelby, sensing that Peel wanted to take control again.

Peel’s eyes turned to the SEAL mountaineer and Shelby’s lover. Nathan had wandered ahead with his weapon ready and eyes alert for threats. “What about him?” Peel asked her. “You are more than friends.”

She nodded.

“Now you are worried about him? Something has changed?”

Shelby felt her stomach knot. “How did you know?”

Peel shrugged. “I didn’t know you were an item until we entered the obsidian scar. But don’t you think he’s changed, since we climbed down the air shaft? Like he’s a different person?”

Shelby resisted her urge to glance again at her lover. “Yes, sir. He’s changed. Shock, no doubt. I’ve seen it before, and so have you. Once you think too much about this tomb, how old it is, how… comprehensive a catalogue of all life on Earth it is… That kind of thing leaves an impression. And not in a good way.”

Peel nodded. “I guess we find what we came for, and get the hell out again, before we think about it further.”

Donna smiled. “Yes, sir. Incidentally, has no one noticed how clean this place is? Not like the Elder City, with shards of sedimentary rock everywhere, ice, dirt and rock? This place, it’s sterile.”

“You think something cleans it? Regularly?”

“Yes.” Shelby shuddered. “Though I’m not sure I want to find out what the cleaner is.”

——

They marched again, constantly moving into progressively wider and wider lengths of the spiraling halls, and upwards through evolutionary time. Soon simple Cambrian life became boneless fishes, then jawless fishes and armored fish, and eventually transitioned into the earliest examples of sharks. Some species were huge, half a dozen meters long. Doctor Rodriguez forgot her anguish and lost herself cataloguing every species she lingered over, identifying them by name and era. Peel remembered her pressing the glass of a shark, and watching the huge beast swim in nothing and getting nowhere. He could have sworn its eyes looked at them all.

“There is so much to learn,” Rodriquez said, her voice faster and with more energy now. “Skin color, that is rarely, if almost never, preserved in the fossil record.” She touched the glass of an armored fish, watched it swim frantically for many seconds, recording the event on her digital camera. “Some of these species humans know nothing about.”

Donna Shelby sidled up to Peel. “Sir, do you think the fish is aware that it’s trapped inside?”

Peel shuddered at the thought that had already been on his mind. Following the hall, they would eventually reach dinosaurs, birds, early mammals, primates and possibly humans and their prehistoric ancestors, depending on how long the Pentapods had maintained their record. “Thinking too much about this place, could send you into shock.” He motioned toward Chelan, who always walked ahead, and barely spoke to any of them. “Have you tried talking to him?”

Shelby nodded, and now she was teary. “I have. He refuses to. I’ve never seen him like this. I shouldn’t have asked him to join this mission.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Major. He was the right choice.”

“Hey!” Chelan called out. “I’ve found something.”

Peel, Shelby and Rodrigues approached the Navy SEAL sergeant, found him staring into a narrow passage leading away from the long hall of preserved species. “Sir,” Chelan saluted. “You asked me to seek storage areas. I think I’ve found one.”

“Very good, Sergeant.”

Chelan led the way, M4A2 ready with his finger on the grenade launcher trigger. Similar to the Shoggoth power plant, the quality of light dropped off in the side passage and transitioned into a dull green hue. The tunnel sloped downwards, was about two meters wide and three tall, and soon opened into a vast chamber loaded with shelves, all packed with metallic meter long cylinders. There were thousands upon thousands of these containers, all the same shape and color.

“Another archive?” Peel asked.

Rodriguez took down a cylinder. “It’s heavy, about ten kilos, I’d say. Wait, look at this.” She pointed to a diagram about halfway down its length, showing a map of continents, mountains and oceans. “That’s Earth,” she said, excitement rising in her voice. “Jurassic, about one hundred and fifty million years ago. See, that’s the Tethys Sea. The southern continent is Gondwana, which will later become South America, Australia, Africa, India and Antarctica. The northern continent is Laurasia.” She looked at each of her companions as her face lit up. “We paleontologists weren’t far off in our estimates of the continental layout. What do you think this means, Major?”

Peel shrugged. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

Shelby pointed to two dials on the end of the cylinder. “What do you suppose they are?”

The Doctor twisted one dial. The cylinder lit up with a dull green glow and hummed.

“I think you just activated it,” Chelan said.

“Wait!” Peel exclaimed, but Maya Rodriguez was already twisting the second dial.

——

Space and time folded around Peel. The experience was instantaneous and simultaneously felt to be an eternity. Somehow, he comprehended forces he couldn’t see folded him up through the dimensions, then folded back down again.

A second later, or maybe a thousand years later, he stood in a forest of conifer trees, huge ferns and gingko plants. The air was warm, about thirty-five degrees Celsius. Soon he felt light-headed, perhaps from breathing too much oxygen. Peel looked up into the bright cloudless blue sky, but saw no sun. Then he heard a river running and spotted birds circling in the sky.

But they weren’t birds…

He stared instead at a flock of pterosaurs. Flying winged dinosaurs.

“What the…”

Rodriguez stepped from behind Peel. “Wow! We’re inside a zoo, or a bio-reserve, I guess. This is a Jurassic landscape. Perfectly preserved in a bubble of spacetime. Perhaps this is the real Gravity Museum.”

Peel looked around, counted off his three bewildered companions. Then he noticed the floating metallic sphere, with a dial on it identical in shape and composition to the dial on the cylinder. “We’re leaving.”

“Wait!” Rodrigues exclaimed. “Please, don’t—”

Peel turned the dial, flinging them again through the dimensions, back to the ancient collections of an alien species far more intelligent and advanced than they were.

——

“Wait—! What did you do that for?”

Peel staggered, reorienting himself with gravity, the green-hued darkness, and the scentless humid air. Suddenly he felt dehydrated, and so grabbed his canteen and drank. He wasn’t the only one. Shelby drank too. He quickly switched off the activation nodule on the canister, and it lost its glow and hum as it became inert again.

“Major Peel, that was a perfectly preserved era of ancient history!” Rodrigues spoke fast, like she was out of breath. “This whole museum, the displays, and these canisters, are a perfect record of Earth’s entire prehistory. We need to go back, to examine. Study! Learn!”

Peel stared at her. He felt annoyance at her attitude, then reminded himself he was afraid, and if he responded with aggression, it wouldn’t serve any of them. He took a deep breath, then whispered, “Doctor, with all due respect, we can study this later. Shoggoths and their human followers hunt us, and in that… folded universe, there are dinosaurs. I really don’t want to fight dinosaurs when I have enough enemies chasing us here.”

Rodrigues looked ready to protest. Then she must have recognized her own thirst and drank from her water bottle.

“Maya, we’ll come back, once we find one of the Pentapod weapons. You can grab one of these canisters and bring it with you.”

“Only one?”

Peel looked at the thousands of cylinders. “You think you can carry more?”

“But there are four of us?”

“The weapon, Doctor. That is our priority. They might be just as heavy, or heavier. Getting a weapon out remains our primary mission objective.”

Chelan stepped forward. “Sir, I hate to interrupt, but I can hear the hostiles approaching.”

Peel listened, but heard nothing. Still, he wouldn’t dismiss Chelan’s observations because the man was younger and his senses more attuned to the world around him. “Very well, we’ll move out.”

Back in the main hall, they broke into a light jog to build distance between their group and their foes. The pack Peel carried seemed heavier the longer they spent down here. But Peel would not give up any of his equipment, which they would require not only in this subterranean world, but once they reached the frozen and desolate surface again.

Minutes later they entered the Carboniferous Era halls, with giant spiders of both the terrestrial and marine variety, dragonflies the size of a small child, sharks, and giant amphibians the size of crocodiles on display. They took a five-minute breather.

“Sir,” said Shelby. “I think we’re close.”

“Close to the weapons?”

She nodded. “There will be another side tunnel here, somewhere. The maps I studied; they are making sense now. I know it’s here somewhere.”

“Excellent work, Major. Okay team, eyes alert. Let’s find this weapon and go home.”

Soon enough they found a similar passage to the one that had led them to the canisters of folded prehistoric preserves. There were many shelves in this chamber, but none contained cylinders. Instead, thousands of Pentapod artifacts of every conceivable shape, structure, texture and oddity confounded them, stacked shelves of tools and building materials like those found in a human hardware store. But almost all the items were bizarre and alien. Peel had problems trying to understand what purposes they served.

They had a general understand of what the Pentapod weapon looked like, from the descriptions they had uncovered in the ancient writings of the alien visitors who had built this museum, but that was not the same as an actual pictures or helpful signage directing them to what they looked for.

“Split up, everyone,” Peel ordered. “We know what we are here for, so go find it.”

The group split and searched. As Peel raced down the many halls, he discovered artifacts that resembled robotic like surgical contraptions, glowing spheres, what appeared to be some kind of rifle but instead of a grip, tentacles lay inert ready to wrap around and hold the weapon in the shooters hand. Another hall contained many boxes with what appeared to be eyes inside them, that watched Peel as he hurried past.

“I’ve found them!”

It was Shelby, so he followed her voice.

Chelan and Rodriguez were with her. Shelby had a contraption in her hand that resembled an old fashioned Victorian Era camera, but made of a brass-like material with a large, red glowing sphere at one end and a grip on the other shaped like a primitive club which was too wide for a human hand to grip. There were three nodules running along the top side of the grip. It certainly matched the descriptions of the weapon they had come here for.

“How do we know it works?” Maya Rodriguez asked.

“We’ll know soon enough,” said Shelby. “When the Shoggoths catch up with us.”

“Test it anyway,” said Peel.

She pointed the weapon away from the group, ready to engage the first nodule when Chelan shifted, not so much moved but morphed into something else. In an instant he was both the muscular special forces soldier and a tall, spider-like woman with dark eyes. Then Chelan morphed again, sprouted tentacles with mouths at their tip, that struck Rodriguez like spears and within seconds tore her body into three discernible chunks of bloody red meat and bone.

Peel was already firing the bullets of his M4 carbine forcing the Shoggoth backwards. When the magazine emptied, and the monstrous impersonator was far enough back not to reach him with its tentacles, Peel shot an incendiary grenade into its center of mass. The monster howled as it burst into flames, tried to shift its body back and forth in time dimensions to heal, but discovering that it burned whichever direction it moved through the higher realities of Shoggoth existence.

Peel dropped his assault carbine and pulled the pump-action shotgun from his backpack and fired. One, two, three phosphorous shells that poured from his weapon like tongues of flame. Soon every morphing surface of the Shoggoth burned and screamed. Peel readied his next round, but the Shoggoth was dead and cooked to cinders.

Only then did Peel look to Major Donna Shelby.

She was in shock, seen in her rigid posture, pale complexion and blank stare. “Chelan, was…”

“Yes, a Shoggoth. Hasn’t been human since the veins.”

“But… I slept…”

“You were intimate only with the human version.” Peel held her gently and turned her so she looked at him and not at the bubbling alien blob that had once been an amoral murderous monstrosity, and before that her lover. “You said it yourself, Donna. He changed since the tunnel.”

“A Shoggoth, snuck up… behind us… and took Chelan without us noticing.”

Peel grimaced. “Yes. We have to presume now they’ve known our every move, and will move in for the kill now we have the weapon we came for.” He glanced at the butchered remains of Doctor Maya Rodriguez. “Poor woman, she finally found her heart’s desire.”

Hues from the ground distracted Peel. Orange and red light emerged from the Rodriguez and Shoggoth’s corpses, then heated them into a thick gooey substance which seemed to ooze out of the ground and surround the foreign body parts. It quickly spread across the blood, bits of dismembered human and charred alien flesh, transforming the once living material into black soot that also seemed to soak into the ground, and vanish. The goo absorbed the shotgun shells too. An efficient clinical cleaning processes.

Shelby shuddered. “What doesn’t kill you, takes away everything you love.”

Peel rubbed her arm. “Come on, lets each grab a Pentapod weapon, and get out the hell out of here. I don’t want to find out what that stuff does to the living.”

“How? I mean, how do we escape?”

“I have an idea, but you won’t like it.”

——

After Peel reloaded and readied his weapons, and took the spare incendiary grenades and shells from Chelan’s weapons, Shelby and he took off in a jog, back down the halls of time. Peel knew they would likely encounter the hunting party of humans and Shoggoths, but they had no alternative. The only exit they knew of was back out the way they had come. It might come down to a shootout, but Peel was counting on them ducking down a side passage, like where they had found the folded universes of Earth’s prehistoric past, and let their enemy slip by. Either way, they only had one aim now, and that was to escape with the Pentapod weapon.

When they reached the Silurian Era halls, Peel halted and signaled Shelby to do the same. After a moment of silence, he asked, “Do you hear that?”

She shuddered. “Yes.”

A wall of black, of arms and legs and heads rolled down the hall towards them faster than they could run, filling the space and sloshing with water. Peel had enough time to see the wall was comprised of thousands of dead bodies, of the same man in the same wetsuit, before the seawater and bodies collided with Peel and Shelby, dragging them with it as it washed down the ancient passage. While the impact didn’t hurt, it absorbed them, and smothered them with flaccid bodies and frigid seawater.

Rolling with the waves, Peel thought he would drown, for he couldn’t surface. Then, just as suddenly, the bodies spread out and the water levels dropped.

One by one, the multiple bodies, many holding AK-94 assault rifles, popped like soap bubbles, vanishing like they never existed.

“What the hell was that?” Shelby coughed up a mouthful of salty water as she scrambled onto her knees.

Peel staggered with her. While many of the bodies had already vanished, many remained. “You can see this?”

“Of course I can?” She climbed to her feet, saturated and shivering like Peel. “What do you mean? You’ve seen this before.”

He nodded, recovering his breath. “Many times. But I always thought I’d imagined it.”

“Fuck, I thought I’d seen some weird shit in my time, but you excel at it, Major.”

One body now staggered to his feet.

But it wasn’t the same person as all the corpses. This man instead wore black combat fatigues, body armor, and carried a Heckler & Koch submachine gun. Acid or burns had scarred his face, and were shaped like a handprint. He looked Asian and slipped in the water as he tried to stand. Then from a prone position, he raised his weapon at Peel.

The Australian intelligence officer fired without hesitation, killing the attackers with a quick burst from his M4A2.

More gunfire sounded as more of the corpses popped from existence. A second attacker emerged from the bodies. For a moment, Peel worried the bullets from the aggressor had hit him. But he fired anyway, killing the second attacker.

Peel kept his weapon ready, watched the bodies until the multiplied mysterious man vanished into other realities, and only the two corpses of Coaldale’s killers remained.

Then he heard gurgling.

Peel turned. Shelby lay on her back, uncomfortable with her pack still behind her, and blood pooling around a wound in her gut. Her breath was fast and shallow while sweat covered her face. “They shot me.”

Orange-red cleaning bubbles oozed out of the white stone, already cleaning the mess left behind by the gun battle. The two killers slowly dissolved, as did their bullet shells. The seawater left behind by the temporal distortion, and Shelby’s spilled blood, were also being cleaned away…

“Come on!” Peel slipped off Donna Shelby’s pack and dropped her weapons and the Pentapod artifact.

“Oh fuck! It hurts.”

The ooze, it followed Shelby’s blood trail and edged towards her.

“I’ll carry you.”

He lifted her, but she slipped, and her left hand landed in the goo. Shelby screamed and recoiled backwards, but her hand had already transformed into black soot.

Peel dragged her, but the goo, it kept following the smear of blood she left behind.

“Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Oh fuck!”

Despite the agony he caused her, Peel slung the wounded soldier over his shoulder and backed down the hall towards the Shoggoth power plant. She screamed without pause, alerting Coaldale and any of his surviving team to their position.

Within a minute, he found the side passage that led to the canister room. He raced down it, not at first recognizing that Donna Shelby had stopped screaming and was unconscious from the shock of pain, blood loss, or both.

After darting down several of the shelves, Peel selected a canister at random, turned the first dial until it activated and shone green.

Even here, the red-orange goo oozed out of the stone to eat her dripping blood.

He hid the canister back on the shelf, then turned the second dial.

——

Peel and Shelby folded in and out of space and time to materialize in a redwood forest with sparse ground vegetation, some thick bushes Peel couldn’t identify, a mountain range in the distance and mild daytime temperature. Again, the sky was cloudless, but a light rain fell.

They collapsed on the soft dirt interspersed with pine needles and low-growing plants. Peel couldn’t guess where or when in prehistoric history they were — he was no prehistoric expert — but the absence of grass suggested this was a period before the time of hominids. He looked for the Pentapod weapon, but he must have dropped it before entering this folded bio-reserve. He cursed, for the fallen weapon would make it easier for Coaldale to find them in the halls of canisters.

Shelby regained consciousness and screamed again. She held out her blackened stump where she once had a hand, looked at it, and screamed again. Her intact hand pressed against her gut. Blood soaked her fingers and her fatigues, but the goo at least didn’t chase her here.

“I’ve got some morphine,” Peel explained as he rummaged through his medical kit. Controlling her blood loss was perhaps more important, but the pain would kill her just as quickly. He did not know what the wound on her hand did to her nerves, or what signals they now sent.

“Please!” she screamed.

Peel plunged the morphine into her. For a moment, Shelby’s screams continued, then her breathing slowed, and a surreal calmness came over her.

She fell back onto the dirt and stared into the sky. Not blinking, and not unconscious, but disassociated from reality.

It took Peel a long moment to realize his friend was none of these things, and had stopped breathing.

Peel fell back on his haunches and just sat there. Unable to think, or plan, or comprehend where or what had just happened.

He needed a moment.

Water ran down his cheeks. He wiped them away, embarrassed, but then considered who was here to notice.

No one.

He heard something large crashing through the undergrowth.

Peel looked up only fast enough to see the twelve-ton tyrannosaurus with its tiny arms but over-proportioned head. Its massive jaws with super-sized jagged teeth reached out and bit him in half—

——

Peel blinked, stood in a redwood forest with sparse ground vegetation, several thick bushes Peel couldn’t identify, a mountain range in the distance and a pleasant air temperature. Again, the sky was cloudless, but a light rain fell.

Donna Shelby lay unconscious at his feet, bleeding out and with her left hand disintegrated by the Gravity Museum’s cleaning goo.

Her eyes fluttered, then opened. Then she screamed.

Peel fumbled for the morphine, injected it into her. She slumped, and within seconds became unconscious.

For several minutes Peel tended to her gut wound, but he couldn’t exert enough pressure on the entrance wound to stop or slow the flow. He heard Shelby’s breath slow until it became inaudible.

Four figures dressed in black unfolded around him. Three men dressed in paramilitary uniforms with submachine guns and burns on their faces shaped as hand prints. The fourth was General Byrd Coaldale.

“You thought you could hide here?” the Shoggoth said with a grin.

A paramilitary soldier fired his weapon, a full burst in Peel’s chest, and he dropped into the dirt, and bled out—

——

Peel blinked again. He was back in the same forest, with the same cloudless sky with a light rain falling. Donna Shelby, horrifically wounded, lay at his feet, stirring as she regained consciousness.

He slung her over his shoulder and sprinted into the thick bushes. When he lay her down, he realized Shelby had bled out, and she was dead again.

Within minutes, the four figures appeared. Bryd Coaldale and the three armed assassins, their weapons raised as they searched for him.

Peel heard a shape crashing through the undergrowth, turned only fast enough to see the tyrannosaurus sneak up on him again, and once more, bite him in half—

——

Peel blinked. A redwood forest. A cloudless sky with light rain. A prehistoric landscape. A period where dinosaurs reigned.

Donna, with her fatal and agonizing wounds, lay at his feet. Peel knew he couldn’t save his friend, so he shot her through the head with his pistol, saving her from the agony she would endure upon waking. The noise of the weapon no doubt alerting the predatory carnivore of his presence, so Peel sprinted into the undergrowth in the opposite direction from the direction he had taken in a previous life.

Coaldale and the three assassins unfolded next to the floating nodal, the gateway to and from this looping nightmare.

The tyrannosaurus appeared where it had taken Peel in the last iteration of this folded universe and chomped down on Coaldale.

Soon a battle emerged. A sight Peel thought he would never see, a Shoggoth warring with a dinosaur. One of the largest land predators that had ever lived bit down on the alien monstrosity, suddenly aware that what it was trying to eat was toxic, and tried to spit it out.

Then the dinosaur’s head exploded, as tentacles punched their way out of the tyrannosaurus’ mouth, eyes and nostrils, while teeth ate the prehistoric beast from the inside out. The dead creature stumbled, then fell upon Shelby’s corpse, smothering it.

Peel raised his M4A2 and fired his incendiary grenade into the Shoggoth, disintegrating it in a fireball of heat and flames.

The three assassins returned fire, but all of them missed Peel in their panicked responses.

They didn’t have cover. Several quick bursts from Peel’s assault rifle finished them.

With the humans disposed of, Peel loaded a second incendiary grenade into his launcher and shot the icky remains of Coaldale, just to be certain the Shoggoth was dead too.

Peel waited for a moment. The battle could attract more predators, or more of Coaldale’s team of killers might materialize into the canister. After ten minutes, when nothing happened, Peel approached the mess of dead meat and alien biomass burning and bubbling away.

He tried to understand what was happening here. Was time looped, so that no matter how often he and Shelby died in this place, they would always come back? For how long would that happen? For an eternity?

He glanced at the return nodal, almost touched it to fold him back into the Gravity Museum.

Then he remembered Donna Shelby. If he left her here, she would spend eternity waking with horrific wounds, only to bleed out in minutes at the most, and do so forever.

Unfortunately, in this iteration, her corpse was now a charred mess of flesh and Shoggoth matter buried under tons of dinosaur meat. There was no means by which to separate her from that, and maybe he needed to take Shelby back while she lived for his plan to succeed.

Then he realized what he needed to do, but he couldn’t do it in this lifetime.

He needed to die again, come back and get Shelby and him out while trapping Coaldale and his soldiers inside.

——

The problem was, Peel didn’t have the courage to kill himself.

He would die eventually in this prehistoric realm; of that he was certain. A dinosaur would kill him, or he would eat something poisonous, slip off a cliff, or disease would ravage his body, or a poisonous animal or insect would sting him and fill him full of toxic venom. He could be here for months or years before that happened. Would loneliness eventually be the end of him? And how quickly was time passing in the Gravity Museum, back on the outside?

But before he lost his mind comprehending how long he might remain trapped in this folded universe, Peel needed time to plan, work out his every step perfectly, so that in the moment of chaos and action, confronted by the prehistoric predator, the human killers, the alien monster and a dying Shelby, he could coordinate events to suit his purposes.

If he failed, he could try again and again, but there was a problem with that approach. If he failed, that might afford Coaldale the same opportunity, providing the Shoggoth time to plan as well. In the next iteration, the Shoggoth might decide to trap Peel in this folded prehistoric universe forever, while it escaped and switched off the canister, so there was no path out for Peel.

Peel shuddered at the thought and considered everything that could go wrong.

But the advantage he had now, was that for this iteration at least, he was alive and Coaldale was not, and he had literally years to plan his next moves.

Peel marched through the landscape to explore and find a location to establish a protected camp. He spotted a herd of grazing triceratops with their massive bone plate skulls and horns, as large as hippopotamuses, all chomping on a variety of plants. He kept his distance.

Then a bright light appeared in the sky.

It grew brighter by the second.

Peel suddenly understood his choice of canisters. This was the late Cretaceous Age, sixty-six million years ago when a meteor ten kilometers wide struck the Earth and wiped out something like three quarters of all life on the planet, including all non-avian dinosaurs. No animal over ten kilograms in mass survived the impact, and he was eight times that.

He glanced at his watch, 0720 hours. He’d been inside the Cretaceous bio-reserve one hour and thirty-five minutes.

The meteor grew larger in the sky until Peel recognized it was coming down directly on top of him.

The wind grew powerful…

The air heated…

The light almost blinded him…

And then he vaporized—

——

Peel blinked. Again, redwood forest. Again, a cloudless sky. Once more, light rain. The same prehistoric landscape.

Donna was coming too, and again she was bleeding out. Peel pulled compression bandages from his medical kit and wrapped them around the wound. Soon she screamed, but the bleeding slowed. Donna would die. There was nothing he could do to save her, but he could stop her dying again and again for an infinite amount of time.

Prepared for this iteration, Peel fired a grenade to where the tyrannosaurus would appear, scaring it off.

Donna’s wails were unnerving. “Please, Harrison,” she said, “I can’t bare it, not again, and again.”

“Trust me,” he said, but then recognized he was too late. The three soldiers unfolded, and so did Coaldale. Peel hadn’t yet loaded a second grenade into his launcher, so he fired off a series of bullets instead, killing the three humans before they orientated themselves to this bizarre world.

But Peel couldn’t react fast enough to stop Coaldale.

The Shoggoth slammed Peel with a tentacular fist that sent him skidding across the dry earth. The blow was powerful and hurt with an intensity he hadn’t experienced before. The pain in his chest caused him to fade in and out of consciousness for a time. When he eventually came to, Coaldale in monstrous form was massacring trying to turn the tyrannosaurus into mincemeat.

Peel staggered backwards, felt for his weapons, but found only his Glock pistol. The shotgun with the phosphorous rounds and the incendiary grenades were his only effective weapons against the alien monster, but Peel shot at the Shoggoth anyway, until the magazine clicked empty.

With the predator dinosaur now nothing more than a carcass of battered organs, shattered bones and shredded muscles, Coaldale reformed, and become human-appearing once more. He was naked, and Peel noticed how accurate his mimicry of human anatomy was, right down to the hairs on Coaldale’s chest, legs and genitals.

Recognizing his defeat, Peel fell to his knees and breathed deeply, exhausted. As soon as this creature killed him, the fight would be on again. This would be his only moment of rest.

“Fascinating place,” Coaldale said. “A replication of Earth’s past, constrained in space and time. If you walk far enough, you come back to the same point. If you wait long enough, you loop back to the same time. And to think the Elder Things, or Pentapods as you know them, created millions of these micro-worlds for prosperity and future study.”

“The Gravity Museum?”

Coaldale grinned. “Yes, indeed. The Elder Things were far more complicated than you humans could ever imagine.”

Peel didn’t understand why the Shoggoth engaged in conversation, but talking beat being torn to pieces. “How so?”

“I imagine you believe you know a secret I don’t.”

Peel snorted. “Probably many secrets, but how does that help you?”

“Well, I know in less than two hours, the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs will strike again, killing us both. You think this secret is to your advantage?”

Peel felt his heart skip a beat. “How do you know?”

“Because Shoggoths, like Elder Things, perceive time differently to you. I’ve already seen the future, and the past, all at once. Across all time.”

“How?”

Coaldale laughed. “You humans, you can only travel in time in one direction in one dimension. Shoggoths, and Elder Things, we can travel in time through three dimensions, both forwards and backwards. In terms you might understand, that’s back and forth, left and right and up and down in time.”

Peel’s head spun. “You mean there are as many dimensions of time as there are of space?”

“That’s right. I’m never trapped in a moment, my Shoggoth consciousness is fluid. I already know my entire existence, both in this four-dimensional slice, and in an infinite number of other slices, and I can move to any moment I chose at any time. Here fighting this representation of you, or fighting another Peel in another up or down or left or right time dimension, are just like flipping through the pages of a book, trying to find a moment that interests me in that moment.”

“You mean, there are an infinite number of Harrison Peels out there?”

“No, there is only one, but broken up an infinite number of times. Some of those fragments defeat me, some don’t.”

Peel couldn’t resist asking his next question. “Do I defeat you in this… ‘fragment’?”

The naked Coaldale grinned, a human expression it had perfected. “Does it matter? Sometime you will, and sometimes you won’t. But whatever you do, here or in another time vector, nothing changes for me. I experience it all.”

Peel massaged his forehead, for he had difficulty comprehending the higher dimensions Coaldale described.

“Have you ever seen an Elder Thing?”

Peel shook his head. “Only videos, and photos.”

“If you think they are terrifying in your four-dimensional reality, they are absolutely nightmarish in the ten dimensions we exist in.” Coaldale watched Peel closely. “I see you are getting it now. You might even be the first human who ever did. When you understand how we perceive reality, you understand how you can never really comprehend us.”

“Then why do you seek to destroy us. Humans, I mean, why can’t you just leave us alone?”

“In some time dimensions we do. In some time dimensions you never existed. Can’t you see how none of this makes any sense to a primate? Or maybe that is the answer to my question.”

Peel mused on what the Shoggoth told him. He tried to find a reason why Coaldale wanted him to know this information, but nothing made sense. Or was that the point? Or was there no point?

“There is no cause and effect, Peel. There is no freewill. Just existence, an infinite number of layers of it. Everything that can happen, will and has already happened.” He stepped close to Peel, and the stench of its petroleum odor grew strong. “Are you ready to fight again?”

His heart rate and breathing increasing, Peel looked up at the monster. “Can I make one request in this time dimension we are in?”

“You can ask?” said Coaldale.

“When you kill me, do it quickly.”

Peel realized that in other dimensions, Coaldale had not respected Peel’s wishes. But when the alien fist of pseudopods came at him at bullet speed, he was glad that in this timeline, death was instant—

——

Redwood forest. Cloudless sky. Light rain. Prehistoric landscape. Once more Peel returned to the time loop commencement point.

This time he fired a grenade much further, towards where the tyrannosaurus was, and then reloaded.

He grabbed Donna, flung her over his shoulder. She screamed and wailed. He ran to the floating dial and waited.

Coaldale and three of the black clad assassins unfolded. In that instance, Peel fired a second grenade into the center of their group, killing the humans and flinging Coaldale far from their materialization point. Then he flipped the floating dial.

He folded, and an eternity and no time at all passed in an instant, and for a moment Peel comprehended what it must be like to have the mind of a Shoggoth, or a Pentapod.

Then he was back in the hall of canisters. Donna lay at his feet, coughing up blood, wincing in pain.

Peel shut down the canister so it no longer glowed, trapping Coaldale and the human killers within. Then he crouched down besides Donna and held her hand. “You won’t wake again. This is it.”

“You… you can’t save me?”

Tears streamed down Peel’s eyes. “No Donna, I can’t.”

“Thank god!”

She tensed, then fell back as her eyes glazed over. Seconds later, she stopped breathing.

Peel felt for a pulse, but she had none. He could not save her life, but he could save her from an eternity of unbearable pain.

Then Peel realized he was not alone.

Two people stood before. A man and a woman. The man Peel recognized, a former Navy SEAL operator working for Coaldale, who Peel had once met in Pakistan and seen from a distance in Nigeria. His name was Dirk Kinsella. The second was a woman, who might have been attractive, if it were not for the hand print acid burns scaring her face. They both pointed Heckler & Koch submachine guns at him.

“We meet again, Peel,” said Kinsella, with an edge in his voice that gave Peel pause.

“Where is Coaldale, and the others?” asked the woman with a snarl.

“Trapped. Forever.”

“Good,” said Kinsella. He turned his weapon on the woman and emptied half a dozen bullets into her. When she collapsed to the stone floor, he shot her again, several times until her head pulped into mincemeat.

Exhausted and confused, Peel could only watch.

“Fuck Coaldale. I want out, Peel. I’ve want to join your side, for a long time now.”

With careful, controlled movements, Peel stood. His eyes motioned to the dead woman’s submachine gun. Kinsella nodded Peel could take it, so Peel did. “I think we can come to some arrangement, Kinsella.”

They heard popping, hissing noises. Then Peel noticed the red-orange goo seeping from the stone, collecting around Donna Shelby’s and the assassin’s bodies, preparing them as Elder Thing waste.

“We need to get out of here, with that.” Peel pointed to the Pentapod weapon he had dropped before folding into the folded Cretaceous universe. “And that?” he pointed to the canister which imprisoned Coaldale.

Kinsella nodded and lifted the bio-reserve cannister. Peel took up the weapon. They stepped away before the growing goo did away with them as a waste product.

“Do you have a way out of here?” Kinsella asked.

Peel looked down to Shelby, or what remained of her. He’d known her longer than anyone else in this sorry world of Code-89 assignments. Like most of his friends, she was no longer counted amongst the living. Then he imagined her in another time dimension, where she was alive, and she was watching Peel dissolve into the Pentapod waste management system, and it would be her mission to save the day. So perhaps she wasn’t really dead. None of his friends were. That thought brought a half-smile to his face.

“Peel?”

“I do, but you won’t like it.”

——

They hastened back to the Shoggoth power station. The house-sized monstrosity seemed more annoyed, if that were possible. Its eyes behind the glass portholes were larger, and its pistons pumped faster. Peel took the Cretaceous canister from Kinsella and dropped it in the vat of red-orange goo. As Peel hoped, the goo absorbed and destroyed the prehistoric bio-reserve, and Coaldale with it. In this dimension at least, the Shoggoth mastermind was no longer a threat.

In response, the Shoggoth power station shuddered.

“That can’t be good,” said Peel.

Kinsella shrugged. “I can’t be certain, but I think Coaldale tampered with it when we arrived.”

Peel felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice over him. “Then we move fast.”

The two men changed into their arctic gear, kept only pistols and incendiary grenades as weapons, and packed long-range radios, collapsible skis, oxygen masks and tanks, and mountaineering equipment as their only inventory.

“Are you ready?” said Peel. “We escape through that orifice.”

All the muscles in Kinsella’s face tightened. “That’s a waste orifice?”

“And it will take us straight to the surface.”

Kinsella nodded. “That’s eight miles above the surface. We’ll die up there.”

“The oxygen masks,” Peel said.

A pipe burst, flung across the chamber and smashed into a wall, turning it into rubble.

“Get out of here!” Kinsella exclaimed. “Take that weapon with you.”

Peel had explained the purpose of the Pentapod weapon during their jog back to the power plant. Now when it was time to leave, Peel hesitated, uncertain if he should stand by Kinsella’s side and fight together.

“Don’t fucking wait. The hell if I’ll let another Shoggoth manipulate me again. Peel, get the fuck out of here.”

Peel nodded, slid into the waste vein as he heard Kinsella fire his weapon at the house-sized Shoggoth, slurping now from the ruptures in its billion-year-old prison. As soon as Peel was inside the vein, the waste piston fired, and Peel shot upwards at incredible speed with a blob of black goo beneath him. The goo was probably part Shelby, and part Coaldale, and part prehistoric history lesson, but he tried not to think about that.

A minute, maybe two minutes later, he fired out of the mountain and came crashing down on a ledge of snow.

He couldn’t breathe, and the air was freezing.

Fighting against unconsciousness and his fear, Peel slipped on his oxygen mask and face plate. He could breathe now, but the air temperature was sapping away his strength. It had to be minus fifty degrees Celsius here.

For a moment, feeling like his body heat was just washing out of him, he lay upon the very top peaks of the Miskatonic Mountains. No human had ever stood higher on the surface of the earth.

More black goo erupted from the waste vents, and what looked to be an arm.

Kinsella’s arm.

Then the side of the mountain exploded, and the black shape-shifting mass of teeth, green eyes, tentacles and sticky texture poured out of the mountain.

Peel slipped on his skis, unfolded his stocks and then looked down. There was a slope of snow he could ski, but it was steep to the point of almost being vertical.

Then the Shoggoth came at him.

The decision was simple. Peel would rather fall thousands of meters to his death than become snack food for a Shoggoth again. And this time, he wouldn’t come back.

Adrenalin pumping through his veins, Peel stood and dropped, skiing fast with the sunlight reflecting off the white slope around him. He quickly gained speed and soon tore down the mountain at over a hundred kilometers per hour. Realizing he would kill himself at this speed, he pushed his ankles in to cut against the snow.

Then he glanced up.

The Shoggoth, dragging a tidal wave of snow and ice after it, came crashing down the mountain after Peel.

Peel turned and skied again, not worrying about speed because if he were too slow the Shoggoth would catch him.

Soon boulders and cragged rock loomed up out of the path in front of him. Peel turned and twisted, ducked around them. He missed a rocky outcrop that would have squashed him like a pancake had he hit it.

Soon snow and ice rattled around him.

Peel turned for a second and saw what he had hoped not to see. The Shoggoth was now an avalanche. It literally fell towards him. Tentacles reached out and smashed the surrounding ground, created further breaks in the snow, and powering the massive wave of destruction thundering down behind him.

Peel made his body low and streamlined, and his speed increased. Perhaps one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour now.

Perhaps faster…

The snow fell around him.

A tentacle smashed where he had been only a second earlier.

Peel spotted a crevasse, barely two meters wide, but he aimed for it anyway and skied down it.

The Shoggoth and its avalanche hit the entrance, and the entire mountain seemed to shudder.

But Peel didn’t look back. Instead, he concentrated on his speed in the narrow channel, then flew out the other side, and sailed through space for a second…

Or two…

Or three…

Before he hit the slope of an adjacent peak and slid down the fresh snow several hundred meters before he brought his speed under control. A few hundred meters later, and he stopped on a slope more vertical than horizontal.

He glanced back. Half the side of the mountain he had been on still fell as millions of tons of rock and icy, burying the Shoggoth that had chased him. Surely, that much weight must have crushed the monster?

Gathering his breath, and recognizing that his oxygen bottle was almost empty, Peel checked his pack to ensure the Pentapod weapon was still there. It was.

He turned and looked both up and down the Miskatonic Mountains. He was about halfway down. At this altitude, he could breathe the air again.

When he identified a route out, Peel skied the rest of the distance at a more leisurely pace.

——

Seven hours later, Peel watched the US Air Force CH-47 Chinook fly in low across the horizon. Despite the permanent sunlight, and the lack of wind or snow, Peel felt frozen to the core. If they’d arrived an hour or two later, he felt the airmen would have only discovered his frozen corpse. When the transport helicopter landed, and the Marines disembarked and approached, Peel only had enough strength in him to nod. His teeth still chattered madly, and his entire body shook.

“Major,” said the Sergeant who approach. “Let me help you on board.”

“One… thing… first… Sergeant…”

“Yes, sir?”

“Are… you… ready… to… engage… a… Shoggoth?”

The Sergeant grinned and held up his M4A2 with its own grenade launcher loaded with an incendiary round. “Always, sir.”

“Go… Good…”

With numb, shaking hands, Peel activated the Pentapod weapon.

One marine wobbled like a plate of jelly, then collapsed into a slivering puddle of tentacles, eyes, teeth and goo.

Seconds later, a dozen Marines destroyed it with a barrage of fiery grenades, lobbed them into its slivering mass. One soldier carried forth a flamethrower and incinerated it with heat. Seconds later, it died.

Through his shakes and chattering, and the cold and hurt and bruises and cuts all over his body, Peel grinned.

The Pentapod weapon delivered.

——

Here ends Cthulhu Resurgent

Harrison Peel’s adventures conclude in Volume 3: Cthulhu Remorseless

THANK YOU

Thank you for reading Cthulhu Resurgent. If you enjoyed this book, would you please consider leaving an honest review on Amazon? Reviews are critical for helping independent authors bring their books to the attention of readers who might enjoy them. I would truly appreciate it, and it can be as short as you like.

Thank you very much.

David Conyers

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Conyers is a science fiction author and editor living in Adelaide, South Australia. He completed a degree in engineering from the University of Melbourne, and today works as a tender writer in the construction industry.

David has published over fifty science fiction and horror short stories, won several awards for his writing, and edited five anthologies including one of the first fiction collections to explore the concepts of exoplanets, Extreme Planets. For over a decade he was the Arts and General Editor and reviewer for Albedo One magazine where he interviewed many top science fiction writers including Iain M. Banks, Greg Egan and Will McIntosh.

His extensive portfolio of Cthulhu Mythos fiction includes his popular Harrison Peel espionage versus the Elder Gods series, contributed to The Last Door video game, and for more than a decade he was a prolific contributor to the Call of Cthulhu tabletop role-playing game.

Today David writes contemporary thriller fiction novels under a pseudonym.

www.david-conyers.com